This work results from the IN7 video art residency, where I was invited to create a site-specific video in one week at the massive Gardenship warehouse in Kearny, NJ. I took photographs of signage, stickers, and graffiti all over the two-acre space (8 000 square meters), then wrote three short poems based on combinations of words and letters found in the space.

As I walked through the warehouse and grounds, I noticed a lot of words related to safety and control, as expected: Caution, Hazard, Fire, Stop, Do Not, Keep Away. Yet there were also quirky, unexpected phrases like "is a ballerina" or "Horizontal Toast". Gardenship is a special insitution, housing artist studios and fabrication workshops in what was once a shipbuilding warehouse. The area is squished between Newark and Jersey City, and is also home to a prison, an Amazon facility, military and shipping facilities, and the historic Westinghouse company. The surrounding water and soil is toxic, but teems with birds, trees, flowers, and insects under an open sky. This poem is my three-movement love letter to the space, with its juxtapositions and hidden beauty.

Acknowledgments

• Curator: Kasia Storynkiewicz for Gardenship
• Voiceover: Aya Karpińska
• Drone footage: Rick Boytis