On-site inspec­tions are usu­ally held in places where some­thing impor­tant has hap­pened, where his­tory was recorded, which eye­wit­nesses then try to recre­ate through first-​person accounts and a reconstruction of events. The second episode of the Sta­dium X Finissage used the strat­egy of site inspec­tion, often employed by police detec­tives or his­to­ri­ans, to stage meet­ings with people who in the course of their per­sonal his­tory have encoun­tered the Sta­dium in one way or another. During an arranged walk, the audi­ence were able to meet, among others, Stanisław Królak, winner of the 1956 Peace Race; film­maker and sports fan Janusz Zaorski; ven­dors from the CHD Sta­dion retail­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion and the area’s com­mer­cial pio­neers; archi­tects fight­ing for the Sta­dium to be recog­nised as a historical land­mark; mem­bers of a folk-dance group that per­formed at the Sta­dium during Communist-​era har­vest fes­ti­vals; employ­ees of the Cen­tral Sport Centre; the plan­ners of Euro 2012; and, last but not least, Prof. Adam Roman, cre­ator of the well-​known Relay Race, a sculpture guard­ing the entrance to the venue. Instead of verismo, On-​Site Inspec­tion offered a documentary the­atre, in which the invited per­sons played them­selves.

Through­out much of its his­tory, the Sta­dium was used for pur­poses other than just host­ing sport events. Its ori­gins were pro­pa­gan­dis­tic: built at a shock-troop work­ing pace in just 12 months, the venue opened with great pomp on July 22, 1955 to coin­cide with the open­ing of the Inter­na­tional Youth Fes­ti­val in Warsaw. It was to be a showcase of the new Com­mu­nist order, its archi­tec­ture meant to reflect the new think­ing. That is why the venue was nei­ther fenced nor closed at night; anyone who felt like it could enter any time of day or night. Access was lim­ited only during sport­ing events, music con­certs, or stunt shows. The witty people of Warsaw eagerly embraced that free­dom, using the stadium’s crown and stands as a place of inti­mate rendez-​vous, plein-​air drink­ing par­ties, and shady busi­ness deals. The Socialist-​Realist mon­u­ments that were to dec­o­rate the arena’s gate from the side of Vis­tula River have never been realised; stone plinths were put in place but remained empty. Nor was the mural depict­ing Polish his­tory in the spirit of class strug­gle and Marx­ist theory, which a young Mex­i­can artist fas­ci­nated with People’s Poland wished to paint on the gate from the Aleja Zie­le­niecka side, ever exe­cuted. The only per­ma­nent emblems of social­ism were the reliefs on the marble-​lined parade stand. Inter­est­ingly, their Com­mu­nist sym­bol­ism was only vis­i­ble to the party nota­bles seated in the stand, not to ordi­nary view­ers. The stadium’s archi­tects had man­aged to steer clear of the reefs of Soc-​Realism. In the 1950s, this sport­ing arena in Warsaw’s Praga-Południe neigh­bour­hood was a stadium-sculpture, one of the most beau­ti­ful sta­di­ums in the world, and a state-of-the-art sports venue.

The walk was a staged nar­ra­tive of one of the icons of People’s Poland, whose archi­tec­tural qual­i­ties and orig­i­nal his­tory made it a unique struc­ture, in which the post-​war his­tory not only of Poland but also of East­ern Europe is reflected.

The par­tic­i­pants, in order of appearance:

1. Jan Wacławik, employee of the Cen­tral Sports Centre, pro­vided an intro­duc­tion to the his­tory of Sta­dium X;
2. Stanisław Królak, winner of the 1956 Peace Race, re-​enacted the ride through the entry tunnel at the finish of the race;
3. Janusz Zaorski gave a sports fan’s account of the 1981 Poland-​Finland foot­ball match, the last sport­ing event held at the sta­dium;
4. Mer­chants from the CHD Sta­dion retail­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion spoke of their more than twenty years at the Sta­dium, from camp beds through makeshift shel­ters to steel stalls, and the dilem­mas related to the market’s clos­ing and the search for a new loca­tion.
5. Dance lesson: mem­bers of a folk-dance ensem­ble demon­strated excepts from chore­og­ra­phy they pre­sented during Communist-​era har­vest fes­ti­vals. The chore­og­ra­phy, which from the per­spec­tive of the stands seemed spec­tac­u­lar, viewed up close turned out to be just schematic pat­terns.
6. The queen of the relay race, Teresa Sukniewicz, Polish hur­dles racer, recounted break­ing the world record in the 100-metre hur­dles, as well as other ath­letic events held at the Sta­dium.
7. Tomasz Kwieciński, from the ATJ Architekci archi­tec­tural firm, spoke of the for­got­ten her­itage of Social­ist Real­ism, the con­cept of build­ing a new sta­dium on the site of the old one, and of the strate­gies of stadium-​building.
8. The secret of the relay race: Prof. Adam Roman, cre­ator of the Relay Race sculp­ture vis­i­ble from the Poni­a­towski Bridge, spoke to Cezary Polak about the Stakhanovite pace of the Stadium’s con­struc­tion, over­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of mean­ings, and a certain error in construction.

Chosen arti­cles and reviews:

Sybille Korte, Katze odel Nudel­mas­chine, "Berliner Zeitung" 23.11.2007

Julia Slater, Spread­ing the Swiss Word in East­ern Europe,Turk­ish Weekly, 11.03.2009

Daniel Miller, Sta­dium X, Frieze, 15.05.09