The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle)

The Long Count is a trilogy of works based on the televised broadcasts of Muhammad Ali’s most famous boxing matches—against Sonny Liston in Miami (1964), George Foreman in Kinshasa (1974), and Joe Frazier in Manila (1975). Widely considered one of the greatest fights in boxing history, the Ali-Frazier matchup featured in The Long Count (Thrilla in Manila) marks one of the earliest instances of pay-per-view broadcasting, becoming the world’s most watched live television event at the time. Across the series, Pfeiffer appropriated original stock footage and digitally camouflaged the fighters by substituting background for foreground in a process of layering, leaving an empty boxing ring that frames the captive audience surrounding it. In doing so, Pfeiffer places the ghostly traces of the Black athletes at the center of this grand spectacle.