Adelheid

In 1874, a book entitled Die GroBstadte in ihrer Wohnungsnoth und die Grundlagen einer durchgreifenden Abhilfe [The Housing Shortage in Major Cities and the Basis for a Radical Remedy], written by Countess Adelheid Ponińska, a Lower Silesian, was published in Germany. lt addressed the problem of the appalling conditions in the tenement houses built at the time for the economically underprivileged. Countess Ponińska was among the first to propose a radical solution in the field of urban planning – garden city-style housing estates for workers. She published her work under a małe penname, rightly assuming that as a woman she would not be taken seriously. Her ideas were not implemented until decades after her death. However, Her pioneering contribution to the development of the garden city concept, which influenced the planning and construction of Brochów, among other places, was completely ignored. lt is Ebenezer Howard who is still credited with the idea, although he put it forward 24 years after Countess Ponińska. Justyna Plec’s work is an expression of protest against the exclusion of women and their achievements from history: Spectres are naw haunting each and every worldly endeavour from which the contribution and agency of specific women has been erased. There are legions of them. Brochów is haunted by the ghost of Adelheida Ponińska, who put forward the concept of the garden city and was nevertheless erased from collective memory. This is the artist’s way of practising hauntology. According to the philosopher Mark Fisher, what haunts us are not ghosts of the past, but spectres of lost futures. Visions of green futures and soothing microclimates, spun in the 19th and 20th centuries, today, in the face of climate catastrophe, cause nothing but fear and grief. The work urges us to listen to the voices of the visionaries while they are still alive, so that later we do not have to summon their spirits in an attempt to create a future that is no longer possible. The object is Wrocław’s first outdoor sculpture, including monuments, dedicated to a specific woman.