Neil Forrest
A Roadmap to Stardust
A Roadmap to Stardust is OortCloudX, the collaborative of Neil Forrest + John Roloff.
Across geographies and cultures, creation myths share the motif of mortals being shaped from clay by gods. A Roadmap to Stardust reimagines an origin story that moves off the planet, hinting at a modern myth.
The exhibition unfolds as an archaeological dig into an imagined past. Among the excavated artifacts are an early civilization’s first attempts at creating a telescope. The ‘original’ terra-cotta telescope is an accumulation of ancient amphorae, King Ashurbanipal’s mighty arm and fractured statuary. The suspended other is formed around a jackal or coyote, the cry of uncertain nature, and abruptly framed by Saturn rocket nosecones.
The telescopes are to suggest that even in the earliest city-states, the ancients looked to the heavens and even them, began to imagine themselves in the midst of a cosmos. These things have never happened, but always are true. –Sallust, Roman Historian
In unearthing two strange optical devices, the primordial unconscious infiltrates...here, the crocodile - which populated the Euphrates river and haunted the civilizing impulse. The crocodile lives with cuneiform (the earliest writing, and in clay) superimposed in its scales. Animal eyes peer, amphorae contain language as much as oil.
A Roadmap to Stardust implies a methodology (the “roadmap”) toward the universal and mythic (the “stardust”). In this iteration, libraries are thematically introduced as one method to catalog artifacts, envision, and circulate history and information.
above: page 14...the occupation of Mars, from The Book of Stardust.
Political placards (top), page 5 farming migration map (middle) and page 11 sketches on the theme of Sumer (bottom).
'EnkiSuit': Assyrian astronaut suit with helmet. Suit conceived and fabricated by Gary Markle.
Dolls and puppets can be psychic nomads, telling the stories of how our telescope was unearthed, scenes of searching the heavens, and how inter-planet travel takes shape. We look upward at the night sky and reckon both future and past.
Four vignettes illustrate elements of A Roadmap to Stardust. This first scene is Ashurbanipal’s Telescope, when the curiosity of Assyria’s king marks a moment when humankind looked into the night sky as a gateway.
Scene two (above) is Landfall on Phobos, and illustrates the actual moment and circumstances of the telescope excavation…when the original Assyrian telescope is uncovered by future Astropuppets.
Scene three (above + below) is Agriculture + Geology on Mars. Our astropuppets undertake mineral resource exploitation and rudimentary agriculture. The work is onerous and many fall exhausted.
Panning for rare earth metals (above),with expended workers (right) being removed by wheelbarrow.
Scene four is Travels on Elysium (below), where some find refuge in a tunnel and others exposed.
Scene four is the beginning of uncertain futures in a new outpost.
A Roadmap to Stardust
2024-25
terra cotta & stoneware ceramics, mixed media, digital prints
Installation dimensions
14 m l. x 9 m w. x 5 m h.
45’ l. x 30’ w. x 16’ h.
A Roadmap to Stardust exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design
San Francisco, CA
May 2025 - Sept 2025
Curator: Ariel Zaccheo
OortCloudX is Neil Forrest + John Roloff
© 2025 by Neil Forrest + John Roloff
photography by Henrik Kam, San Francisco