super!giant!jump!star!

Super!Giant!Jump!Star! was a large-scale public ceremony premiered in partnership with 1708 Gallery’s annual InLight event in Richmond, Virginia on October 17–18, 2025. Transforming Abner Clay Park into a constellation of illuminated sculptures, symphonic and choral music, and experimental contra dance, the event marked the culmination of Jump!Star: a ten-year experiment in the invention of celestial ceremony to mark the eventual transition of Earth’s North Star.

Inspired by the astronomical phenomenon of axial precession, Jump!Star has brought together artists, scientists, musicians, chefs, dancers, and local communities to imagine how future generations might one day say goodbye to Polaris and welcome our next Pole Star. Over the course of a decade, the project has evolved through collaborative gatherings called Constellates, where participants have collectively invented songs, tested recipes, choreographed dances, designed regalia, and built ceremonial objects for this future cosmic transition.

The Richmond premiere featured illuminated sculptures representing Earth’s eventual future North Stars: the world premiere of Jherek Bischoff’s Jump!Star Symphony performed by the Richmond Symphony; choral works developed with Mirah and the United Voices of Ebenezer Baptist Church; Future Food tastings prepared by the Secret Supper Society and shaped by the speculative climate research of Sonali McDermid and Kat Morgan; as well as Futures of Love and Study experiments and a mini meteor shower by Lily Cox Richards.

The event also carried the weight of a long and improbable history. Almost all of the illuminated sculptures had originally been constructed for a premiere scheduled in Kansas in 2019, but hours beforehand a tornado touched down on the site, canceling the event. The fragile paper sculptures survived and remained stored in barns and former factories for six years, throughout the pandemic. Their eventual illumination in Richmond was both a celebration and a kind of resurrection.

The weekend concluded with a Supernova Ceremony designed with Richmond Zen, in which the illuminated sculptures were ceremonially dismantled, returning the project once again to the ongoing act of imagining futures together.

For much more about the ceremony and collaborators, as well as a full list of acknowledgements, visit Jump!Star.