Finissage of the Stadion X

STADIUM IN CCA, SKOPJE

2009-12-20T07:32:00.001-08:00

The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN TRAM CHELSEA COLLEGE, LONON

2009-12-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/

'Stadium X' - Joanna Warsza

BONIEK! A One-man Re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium Football Match by Massimo Furlan, commentary by Tomasz Zimoch, 10-th Anniversary Stadium Warsaw, October 2007

Open Lecture
Wednesday 02 December 2009, 17:15 to 19:00 
Lecture Theatre Chelsea College of Arts and Design,
16 John Islip Street London SW1P 4JU

Joanna Warsza will discuss her curated series of live art projects The Finissage of Stadium X and the related reader Stadium X — A Place That Never Was. Both projects were inspired by the heterotopic logic of Warsaw’s 10th-Anniversary Stadium, and its long-standing (non-) presence in the middle of the city. Built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-devastated capital, in the early 1990s the stadium fell into ruin, being ‘revived’ by Vietnamese and Russian traders. Since then the Stadium and the open-air market surrounding it have become an Asian town, a primeval garden, a realm of discount shopping, a storehouse of biographies and urban legends, a spontaneous piece of Land-Art, or a work camp for archaeologists and botanists.
The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becoming a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Vietnamese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multicultural site in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a work camp for botanists. Its heterogeneity, its longstanding (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problematic exoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts presenting a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.
Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza

Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch

Design by René Wawrzkiewicz

Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik

Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009

U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

Laura Palmer Foundation takes its name from the character whose absence organizes the plot of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The label produces actions, conceptual events, and performances. Incor po rat ing real life and fictitious or staged events, and its representation, it seeks out new collaborative models.

Joanna Warsza A curator and artist on the cusp of the performing and visual arts, she also directs the Laura Palmer Foundation. She works mostly in public space with the invisible, the ephemeral or staged situations — around the Vietnamese community in Warsaw, Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland or post-soviet architecture legacy in Georgia and Armenia. She has collaborated with AICA Armenia, CCA Kaliningrad, CCA Kiev, the Centre Pompidou, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the Building in Berlin or Performa in New York, among many other projects.

The book and the events were created with the generous support of the City of Warsaw

In collaboration with Critical Practice.

STADIUM IN CCA, TEL AVIV

2009-12-20T07:29:00.001-08:00

http://www.cca.org.il/

The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN 16BEAVERS, NEW YORK

2009-12-20T07:28:00.002-08:00

http://www.16beavergroup.org/

16beaver, The Thing and Laura Palmer Foun da tion present:
Public-Art Projects in the Ex-communist Sta dium and in the former Warsaw Ghetto

The 10-th Anniver sary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN LA BELLONE, BRUSSELS

2009-12-20T07:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.bellone.be/fr/general

The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN CAC, VILNIUS

2009-12-20T07:27:00.001-08:00

http://www.cac.lt/en

The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN P-AF, FRANCE

2009-12-20T07:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.pa-f.net/

The 10-th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-ruined Warsaw. It was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years, by the mid-’80s, it fell into ruin, becom ing a post-Communist phantom. It was ‘revived’ by Viet namese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russ ian traders, pioneers of capitalism. An open-air market called Jarmark Europa became the only multiculturalsite in the city, a storehouse of biographies, a major tourist attraction, a primeval forest, a realm of precarity and discount shopping, or a workcamp for botanists. Its het erogeneity, its long standing (non)presence in the middle of the post-Communist city, the invisibility of the Vietnamese minority, the debate around the new National Stadium here for the Euro 2012 football cup, and the lack of a critical debate on Poland’s post-war architectural legacy — inspired Joanna Warsza curatorial project Finissage of Stadium X.

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists, activists and athletes into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The result were projects of a participative and semi-documentary nature (a walk, a football match, a Sunday radio station, a spectacle on a building site, an exhibition featuring real people) which touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, the power of imagination, ambiguities, and the future, as well as on the problem aticexoticism of a disappearing place.

The reader Stadium X-A Place That Never Was offers a selection of texts present ing a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its existence as a ‘city within a city’ and also documents the series of live art projects. The Stadium and its parasites functions, which are now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Stadium X — A Place That Never Was: A Reader

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Daniel Miller, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Van Tuong, Tomasz Zimoch
Design by René Wawrzkiewicz
Photos by Mikołaj Długosz, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik
Published by Bęc Zmiana Foundation and Ha!art, Warsaw and Kraków, 2008/2009
U. S. distributor Textfield; European distributor Motto

STADIUM IN CCA, KALININGRAD

2009-12-20T07:09:00.001-08:00

STADIUM X AT THE BUILDING BERLIN/E-FLUX, 25.04.2009

2009-06-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

STADIUM X AT THE BUILDING BERLIN
Live Art Projects in a Communist Ruin, a Reader and its Various Contexts
Saturday April 25th 2009

Panelists:
Sebastian Cichocki, curator, Warsaw MOMA
Warren Niesłuchowski, writer and philologist
Stefanie Peter, anthropologist
Anda Rottenberg, curator and critic
Pit Schultz i Diana McCarty, radio art artists, theoreticians, backyardradio Berlin
Joanna Warsza, curator, Laura Palmer Foundation

The Building / Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a / Berlin, 10249 / Germany, www.e-flux.com
Coordinator: Magda Magiera

The afternoon seminar at The Building and in its garden offered a selection of short, partly performed lectures, mostly by the authors in the reader, forming a multi-faceted picture of the Stadium’s deterioration, its bizarre existence as a ‘city within a city’, and the artists’ interventions. The architectural and topographic situation of the Building in Berlin — as a detached edifice with a plot of green lawn — will play a major role in the construction of the event, which will feature a live radio broadcast by backyardradio and a lawn project curated by Sebastian Cichocki.

The 10th-Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-devastated capital, and was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years. In the early 1990s it fell into ruin, being ‘revived’ by Vietnamese and Russian traders, pioneers of capitalism. Since then the Stadium and the open-air market surrounding it have become an Asian town, a primeval garden, a realm of discount shopping, a storehouse of biographies and urban legends, a spontaneous piece of Land-Art, or a work camp for archaeologists and botanists. The heterotopic logic of the place and its long-standing (non-)presence in the middle of Warsaw, inspired Joanna Warsza’s curated series of live art projects The Finissage of Stadium X and the related reader, Stadium X — A Place That Never Was (published by Ha!art and Bęc Zmiana Foundation).

A Trip to Asia: An Acoustic Walk Around the Vietnamese Sector of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium by Anna Gajewska, Joanna Warsza and Ngo Van Tuong (2006); Boniek!, a one-man re-enactment of the 1982 Poland-Belgium football match by Massimo Furlan, with commentary by Tomasz Zimoch (2007); or Radio Stadion Broadcasts by Radio Simulator and backyardradio (2008) were subjective excursions undertaken by artists into the reality of a Stadium ‘no longer extant’. The projects, of a participative and semi-documentary nature, touched upon issues of memory, deterioration, or the problematic exoticism of the place.

Stefnie Peter, photo Chris Frey

Anda Rottenberg, photo Chris Frey

Text by Daniel Miller for frieze on-line:

From the Colosseum in Rome to the ‘Bird’s Nest’ in Beijing, stadium architecture has always been about state-building. Warsaw’s 10th-Anniversary Stadium (the Stadion Dziesiçiolecia; abbreviated as Stadion X-lecia) opened late in 1955, the same month as the Palace of Culture, to memorialise the proclamation of the Manifesto of the Polish Committee of National Liberation on 22 July 1944. Literally built from the rubble of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, for 50 years the structure served as a stage on which the history of Poland was acted out.

The first event that it hosted was a football match: a 2-2 draw on 27 July 1955 played between Warsaw and the city of Katowice, then named Stalinogród. Fifty-three years later, the curtain came down on the site with a series of art projects organized by the Laura Palmer Foundation, a Warsaw-based independent arts organization. Starting with A Trip to Asia (pictured below, 2006), which offered a tour of the Vietnamese trading community that had risen improbably in the stadium’s ruins, subsequent projects included a one-man football match and a Sunday radio station. The umbrella name for the actions was ‘The Finissage of Stadium X’

Two weeks ago in Germany the project was brought to its conclusion, with the launch of the reader Stadium X: A Place That Never Was (2009) at the information service e-flux’s European headquarters, the Building in Berlin. In a series of talks from the book’s contributors, the event itemized the significance of a space that Laura Palmer curator Joanna Warsza described as ‘a post-communist phantom’.

Speakers repeatedly circled three epochal moments, beginning with Ryszard Siwiec’s self-immolation in the stadium on 8 September 1968. A father of five, Siwiec doused himself in petrol and lit a match before 100,000 people, as the Polish socialist leader Władysław Gomułka spoke on stage. (The action was intended as a protest against the use of Polish troops in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous month.) Seven seconds were captured on camera by a Polish news crew and were suppressed, remaining an official secret until 1980. But stories continued to circulate under the radar, and the event eventually gained international attention with Macie J. Drygras’s 1991 documentary Hear me Cry. The incident is now available on YouTube, in two different versions, one accompanied by Catholic funeral music, and concluding with an image of Siwiec in the clouds, rendered as a holy ghost.

In 1983, 15 years after Siwiec’s drastic action, Pope John Paul II came to Warsaw and delivered mass in the stadium, turning the stadium’s clock into an altar and planting a crucifix on the crown that would remain after his departure. As Solidarność was gaining momentum, more than a million of the faithful gathered to listen to the Pope’s disquisition on the 1683 Battle of Vienna. Six years later, after Solidarność had won, the stadium hosted a different spectacle: a Stevie Wonder concert.

As socialism in Poland crumbled, the stadium fell into disrepair, before being revived in the ‘90s as a gigantic capitalist grey-market. Jarmark Europa took over the site and turned – it to commerce, laying the foundations for the Stadium’s art senescence. Constituting the only multicultural site in the ethnically homogeneous Warsaw, the area became an arena for negotiating cultural and social difference. It was here that the Israeli artist Yael Bartana shot her widely circulated art/propaganda video Mary Koszmary (2007), starring Krytyka Polityczna leader Sławomir Sierakowski as a heroic intellectual calling for the murdered Jews of the Holocaust to return to Poland. ‘We can finally be Europeans’, Sierakowski pleads to the empty stadium.

Foreignness served as the point of departure for half of the finissage’s episodes. ‘The End Of Jarmark Europa’ (2007) was a debate on the Vietnamese question held at Warsaw University, organized in collaboration with Krytyka Polityczna. ‘Radio Stadion Broadcasts’ (pictured above, 2008), a collaboration with Berlin’s Backyard Radio, borrowed a trick from the Danish artist Jens Haaning (who, in 1994, broadcasted jokes in Turkish in Oslo’s central square) to transmit in Vietnamese over the Jarmark public address system. Two months later, for ‘Schengen – Control Observation Point’ (2008), Berlin-Bern theatre group Schauplatz International planted a telescopic monitoring point on the upper rim of the stadium, before staging a performance on the field below, in an action named after the 1985 pan-EU immigration treaty.

The other half of the programme focussed on memory. Judging from the Laura Palmer Foundation website, the documentary theatre show On Site Inspection (2007) seemed to consist in the main of wandering around and talking to people involved in the stadium’s past and future. Palowanie/Pile Driving (2008), a performance by Annas kollktiv, a consortium of Swiss architects, dancers and sociologists, meanwhile put on a funereal performance at night.

In Boniek! (2007), the finest episode of the set, the Swiss artist Massimo Furlan re-enacted the movements of footballer Zbigniew Boniek, as he led Poland to a 3-0 defeat of Belgium in the 1982 World Cup. The similarities with Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s 2006 film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait were obvious, part of contemporary art’s ‘footballing turn’, but the presence of a several-hundred strong crowd and the inclusion of ‘live’ commentary by the Polish radio reporter Tomasz Zimoch rendered Boniek! participatory in a way that Zidane was not, suggesting future possibilities in stripped-down spectacles, in rotting white elephants.

Stadium X itself won’t be among them; the structure was torn down last year to clear the ground for the construction of a new national stadium for the European Championships in 2012. ‘We can finally be Europeans’, says Sierakowski. But the creative destruction repeats a question which recurs throughout this book; whether ruins equal the obliteration of memory, or its foundation.

Daniel Miller for frieze

Daniel Miller is a critic living in Berlin.

The seminar was possible thanks to the generous support of Polish-German Cooperation Fund

Organisers: Bęc Zmiana Foundation & Laura Palmer Foundation
Partners: Pro QM Berlin, Ha!art distribution house, Polish Culture Institut Berlin, e-teatr.tv

Dj Anton Vidokle, photo Chris Frey

Stadium X – A Place That Never Was – A READER

2008-12-03T06:03:00.000-08:00

edited by Joanna Warsza
contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Halina Galera, Ewa Majewska,
Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren Niesłuchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Piątek, Cezary Polak, Anda Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszyński, Barbara Sudnik-Wójcikowska, Stach Szabłowski, Ngô Văn Tưởng

photos Mikołaj Długosz, Christophe Gaillard, Jerzy Kosiński/NCS, Damazy Kwiatkowski/PAP, Marta Pruska, Marta Orlik, Marek Ostrowski, Tomasz Pasternak, Albert Zawada/Gazeta

A mix of Socialist mausoleum, Aztec temple, and bunker system with a network of small gardens, along with a grid structure of endless market stalls – here is one of possible pictures of Socialist Realist ruin – the 10th-Anniversary Stadium and the Jarmark Europa open-air market surrounding it. After twenty years of a phantom-like existence in the middle of Warsaw, this expanse in 2008 became the construction site of a new national stadium. The book offers a selection of texts presenting a multi-faceted picture of that site’s deterioration and its bizarre existence as a ‘city within a city’. It pictures the area as a Land-Art piece and picturesque ruin, a primeval forest, a realm of precariousness and discount shopping, a work camp for archaeologists and botanists, a ‘Vietnamtown,’ a sonic phenomenon or architectural splendor. The reader also documents the series of site-specific art projects entitled The Finissage of Stadium X curated by Joanna Warsza and provides them with a theoretical context.
The Stadium was built in 1955 from the rubble of a war-devastated, and was to preserve Communism’s good name for forty years. In the early 1990s it fell into ruin, being at the same time ‘revived’ by Vietnamese intelligentsia-cum-vendors and Russian traders, pioneers of capitalism. Jarmark Europa suddenly became the only multicultural site in the city, a storehouse of biographies and urban legends, as well as a major tourist attraction. The heterotopic logic of the place and its long-standing (non)presence in the middle of Warsaw brought about the series of art projects, and later this reader.
Over the course of time, the 10-th Anniversary Stadium which is now being erased form the map of Warsaw will likely become some distant planet, while the present publication, with the brilliant contributions from its authors, will attain — perhaps — the status of an unreal story about a place that, after all, never was.

Published by

Bęc Zmiana Foundation
ul. Mokotowska 65/7, 00-533 Warszawa, Poland
+48 22 827 64 62 www.funbec.eu

Korporacja Ha!art
pl. Szczepański 3a, 31-011 Kraków, Poland
+48 12 422 81 98 www.ha.art.pl

Edited by Joanna Warsza
Design René Wawrzkiewicz
Cover photograph Mikołaj Długosz

208 pages, hard cover

Printed on Arctic Volume Ivory 130 gr
Typeset in NaomiSans and Swiss911

ISBN 978-83-61407-84-3
ISBN 978-83-925107-2-7

www.ha.art.pl
www.funbec.eu

Episode 1: BONIEK!

2008-07-11T04:48:00.000-07:00

BONIEK!

Remake of the match Poland-Belgium 1982 by Massimo Furlan commented by Tomasz Zimoch

Stadium X, Warsaw, 14 October 2007

Swiss artist Massimo Furlan recreated a famous polish soccer game from the perspectiv of its best player – Zbigniew Boniek. Furlan appeared on the derelict Warsaw Stadium as a solitary player reproducing the choreography of the great polish footballer. The original coaches were present on the assisting bench. There was no ball and no referees. The match was commented live by Tomasz Zimoch – brilliant polish sport commentator. Furlan as Boniek deftly followed the action perfectly sinchronised with Zimoch’s commentary. The 700 people audience (in majority coming from the art crowd, therefore have never attended a real match) within five minutes started acting as football funs. A remake took part in Stadion X just before its demolition and transformation into a new Olympic center. Action opened a series of perfomativ events the Finissage of Satdion X and Jarmark Europa Market– the biggest and spontaneous market in Eastern Europe around the symbolic stadium created over the debris of Warsaw uprising.

fot. Mikołaj Długosz

Press:
Rzeczpospolita 15.10.2007
Dziennik, 15.10.2007
CJG, 12.10.2007

Episode 2: SITE INSPECTION

2008-07-11T04:47:00.001-07:00

Inspections of the site are usually held in the place where something important has happened, and afterwards eyewitnesses try to report this situation. The second episode of Finissage of the Stadium X was formed on the basis of the inspection of the site and on the idea of meeting people who have been connected to the Stadium: Stanisław Królak (remarkable cyclist of the Peace Race), Janusz Zaorski (film director and a sport fan), traders from the Jarmark Europa Market, Euro 2012 planners and Adam Roman (sculptor), to name a few.

Followed by the lecture by Stephane Noel, ex-Director of Belluard Festival, Fribourg, CH
Clouds of 1000 balloons of helium, turning off the city lights, intelligent trees
and a presentation of “Boniek!” - a movie by Marcin Latałło.

Sunday, 18th November 2007

Part I – 12 a.m. Stadium X entrance from Wybrzeże Szczecińskie
Part II – 7:00 p.m. Chłodna 25 Club, www.chlodna25.blog.pl

PRESS
Gazeta Wyborcza, 18.11.2007
Obieg

Episode 3: JARMARK EUROPA

2008-07-11T04:46:00.001-07:00

Every hundredth citizen of Warsaw is originally from Vietnam. However, they are invisible in the city that is almost homogenic. The only place one can notice their existence is Vietnamese part of the Jarmark Europa Market. Students and educated people, quite often with their PhD, created this spot in early 90's so that they could work and at the same time were able to use the polish economic prosperity in order to become successful. Lately, many questions have arisen because of the idea of closing down the Jarmark Europa Market: What will happen with Vietnamese people after that? Is it truth that they decide to return to their homeland, because of the polish political situation? What do we know about the Vietnamese minority - the biggest minority in Poland? During the debate a short movie about Vietnamese, who are back to Hanoi was presented and conversation between Ngo Van Tuong (activist and journalist), Teresa Halik, PhD (Vietnam specialist), Paweł Boski, PhD (psychologist) and Joanna Warsza (curator of the project) was held.

Episode 4: RADIO STADION

2008-07-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

RADIO STADION BROADCASTS

International RADIO STADION for a weekend
in all the languages of the market

Sunday, 27th April, 2008 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
admission free, access from Rondo Waszyngtona

On the market around Stadion Dziesięciolecia there is a system of loudspeakers used for giving opening hours, making announcements, and providing other administrative information. The RADIO STADION BROADCASTS project will transform this local public address system into a weekend radio station. Its programme will be drawn up based on suggestions by the vendors from all over the world who trade at the market, and will be broadcast in their own languages. The original inspiration for the project came from a piece by the Danish artist Jens HAANING, who broadcast jokes in Turkish over a loudspeaker in the main square in Copenhagen. His installation created a community of laughter among Turkish emigrants, and temporarily inverted their situation by making the majority feel excluded for once.

The RADIO STADION BROADCASTS project uses an everyday means of communication to create an ephemeral participatory acoustic space blurring territorial, symbolic, and identity boundaries. The idea relies on the inability of the general public to understand programmes in the native languages of the vendors (sports commentary in Vietnamese, political manifestos in Arabic, news in Russian etc). Deriving from the concepts of radio art, the project will create a micro-society of listeners and performers made up of people who have been subtly enriching the homogenous landscape of the post-communist city since 1989.

The broadcasting will be prepared by Jacek Skolimowski and Adam Witkowski from Radio Simulator and Pit Schultz and Diana McCarty from Berlin backyardradio. Backyard Radio snatches the radio from tv towers and broadcasting agencies and instead of showering down on the city, the radio waves beam out of the districts and neighborhoods. The seat of backyardradio is now Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

listen to the extracts of Radio Stadion

PRESS:
CJG - 25.04.2008
Gazeta Stołeczna 28.04.2008

Episode 5: PALOWANIE

2008-07-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

annas kollektiv / Zürich

PALOWANIE
night show on the construction site

saturday 31 may 2008, 22.00
Stadion X-lecia, entrance through the tunnel from Al. Zieleniecka

annas kollektiv is an interdisciplinary group of two dancers, two architects and a video artist. Since 1999 annas kollektiv has created site-specific work and has aimed at offering new views on public spaces. The artists confront the architecture as a potential city-set raising questions about social, urban and culture meanings that are generated by it. Their performances are also dematerializing the architecture objects – through e.g. optical disturbance of gravitation, changing the emergency exit systems, using light effects. annas kollektiv shows are often inscribed into the subterranean parkings, high-rise buildings or train stations. During the two weeks residency in Warsaw the Swiss artists will prepare a performance in the ex-communist X-Anniversary Stadium, built after the 2nd WW with the ruins of the city, which has now become a construction site for new Stadium for Euro 2012. Based on space, sound, light and movement the show will serve as artistic acupuncture showing the disappearing parts of the monumental sport place – such as historic slices of tribunes, tunnels entrance, lawn in flowers, points of pillaring. The Swiss collective, inspired by the architecture of the Stadium as a multilayered space of history, will offer its own interpretation of this outstanding and disappearing place, which have never been discussed as a valuable heritage of the social realism period.
With: Anna Bürgi, Martin Bölsterli, Boris Hitz, Katrin Oettli, Deborah Suhner
Music by: m.Bunio.s

PRESS:
Dziennik, 29.05.2008
Gazeta Stołeczna, 02.06.2008

Episode 6: SCHENGEN

2008-07-11T04:21:00.000-07:00

Schauplatz International presents one day live installation
SCHENGEN – control observation point

15.06.2008 / 12 a.m.-8 p.m

Stadiums and borders are meant to build the national identity. Whereas the stadiums are the real architectural objects constructed within few years; borders are the products of our imagination. They are in fact consisting of contracts, performativ acts, symbols and potential violence. Borders and stadiums are supposed to tell us, who we are. Berlin-Bern group Schauplatz International recreated in the middle of the lawn a fragment of the polish eastern border in 1:1 scale. An observation point was constructed on the crown of the Stadium. Artist were picknicking on the lawn, in the borner zone, during the whole day long, taking to the experts and passers by. In this space of multi-meaning and contradiction, past and future Schauplatz International wanted to cool down and look at the site beauty and misery.

Until recently Frontex was located near the 10th-Anniversary Stadium. Frontex, the EU agency based in Warsaw is responsible for the border security in Europe. In cooperation with the police, the army and the secret service Frontex is organizing the quick intervention groups, people hunting and charter deportation. In consequence the emigrants are using more and more dangerous ways to pass the borders. Frontex employees, on their way to work, were passing every day by the Stadium and the market – the place which was dividing people in legal and illegal ones.

The artists were inspired by the phenomenon of the Stadium - built from the ruins of Warsaw as a monument of the communist regime, then the seat of the pioneers of the capitalism, the only place diverse culturally where the emigrants gathered, the meta-ruin. Very soon the new National Stadium for Euro 2012 will be built on this location. The amazing contrast between the derelict monument with the new, bottom-up energy of the traders and the emigrants, the architecture of the future, questioned procedures of Frontex and all other unknown features – created the climax of the control observation point.

experts taking part in Schengen, in order of appearance

Jan Węcławik, sport club long-term employee
Filip Pawlicki, student, have been to Schengen
dr Michał Kozłowski, philosopher, alterglobalist
Wiesław Nowicki, ornitologist
Radek Pyffel, sinologist, author of China in the year of Olimpics
Aslan Dekaev, refugee from Chechnya
Hubert Kowalski, expert on military technologies
Ngo Van Tuong, Vietnamese oppositionist journalist from Dan Chin Viet
Prof. Barbara Sudnik, botanic, exert on the plants in the stadium
and dr Marek Ostrowski, specialist on landscape information
Ewa Masłowska, teacher
Tadeusz, security guard, company Ekotrade

PRESS:
Gazeta Stołeczna, 14.06.2008
CJG, 13.06.2008