In September 2018, a Bristol music venue played Toto’s 1982 hit ‘Africa’ on a loop for 12 hours straight. Twelve hours, nonstop, of Toto’s 1982 hit ‘Africa’ sounds like a lot. Too much, if anything. Unless you’re London-based German-Namibian artist Max Siedentopf. Because 12 hours is nothing for him. He wanted more. A lot more. And he got it. Max has now created an installation in the Namib desert that will play Toto’s 1981 hit ‘Africa’ on loop… FOREVER. For eternity. It doesn’t take a mathematician to tell you that forever is considerably longer than 12 hours. Your move, Bristol.
But, other than trying desperately to one-up the West Country’s greatest city, what’s the, you know, point? Well, Siedentopf told CNN: ‘Even though “Africa” by Toto was released in 1982 it is still very much present in today’s pop culture and frequently used for memes; even entire Reddit pages are dedicated to the song. I was very intrigued by this and wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit “Africa” in Africa’.
His memetacular, bantstastic installation is comprised of six solar-powered speakers and a single MP3 player. Anyone who has ever owned a single piece of modern technology will be able to tell you that the chances of this MP3 lasting forever are about as high as someone making sense of Brexit before March. So good luck with that.
Find out more about Max right here.
