[spectre] Stadium X at The Building, Berlin

[Diana McCarty]

Stadium X at The Building, Berlin
Live Art Projects in a Communist Ruin, a Reader and its Various Contexts

Saturday April 25th, 16:00
THE BUILDING, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a, Berlin


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. Since then the Stadium  
and the open-air market have become an Asian town, a primeval garden,  
a realm of discount shopping, a storehouse of urban legends, a piece  
of Land-Art, or a work camp for botanists. The heterotopic logic of  
the place and its long-standing (non-)presence in the  
city, 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.

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.
 
The afternoon seminar at The Building and in its garden will offer a  
selection of short, partly performed lectures, 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 (N Pieces by Etienne Noiseau & Radio Tale  
by Fran Ilich) and a garden project curated by Sebastian Cichocki.
 
Saturday April 25th.
The program starts at 4 p. m.
5:00 ? 5:30 p. m.  Dr Stefanie Peter, anthropologist, The Stadium as Stage
5:30 ? 6:00 p. m. Anda Rottenberg, curator and critic
6:00 ? 6:30 p. m. Joanna Warsza, curator, Laura Palmer Foundation,  
Finissage of Stadium X
6:30 ? 7:30 p.m. Break
7:30 ? 8:00 p. m. Sebastian Cichocki, curator at Warsaw MOMA, A Walk  
through the Ruins, or In Praise of Entropy (radio edit)
8:00 ? 8:30 p. m. Warren Nies?uchowski, writer and philologist,  
Stadion | Spadion | Spatium: Signing-Off
8:30 ? 9:00 p. m. Pit Schultz & Diana McCarty, berlin backyardradio,  
The Radio and The Baazar
 
Beginning at 10.00 p.m. A party at The Building, Platz der Vereinten  
Nationen 14a
Admission is free. Registration required.
 
 
 
Stadium X ? A Place That Never Was: A Reader
Edited by Joanna Warsza Contributing authors: Claire Bishop, Sebastian  
Cichocki, Benjamin Cope, Ewa Majewska, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Warren  
Nies?uchowski, Marek Ostrowski, Grzegorz Pi?tek, Cezary Polak, Anda  
Rottenberg, Roland Schöny, Pit Schultz, Tomasz Stawiszy?ski, Stach  
Szab?owski, Ngô Van Tuong photos: Miko?aj D?ugosz, Marta Pruska, Marta  
Orlik. Published by Ha!art and B?c Zmiana Foundation, Warsaw and  
Kraków, 2008/2009.
 
On sale in Pro QM Berlin and at the Building!
 
Organizers: The Building, Laura Palmer Foundation, B?c Zmiana Foundation
Partners: Polish Institute Berlin, Ha!art publishing house, Pro QM  
Berlin, backyardradio Berlin.
This event was made possible thanks to the generous support of The  
German-Polish Foundation.
 
More at:
www.laura-palmer.pl