In the Air Tonight (2020), 11’10 (or 17’06 with entire musical outtro)
by Andrew Norman Wilson

There’s an urban legend about Phil Collins’ inspiration for his 1980 hit In the Air Tonight, which Andrew Norman Wilson first heard as a teenager. The legend’s ritual encourages that the song is played while a narrator tells the story, syncing its infamous analog drum break with the climax of the narrative.
In March 2020, from a hillside home that faces the Hollywood sign, Wilson began to dwell on Phil due to an experience he had one night on the Pacific Coast Highway. Driving alongside him was a woman tuned into the same radio frequency, emphatically singing along to In the Air Tonight.

Directed by Andrew Norman Wilson
Written by Andrew Norman Wilson
Editing by Andrew Norman Wilson
Sound design by Paul Evans
Voice Cast: David George

Director Bio

Andrew Norman Wilson is an artist based in America and Europe. Solo exhibitions include Ordet Milan (2020), the Kunstverein Braunschweig (2019), the Fotomuseum Winterthur (2019), Center for Contemporary Art Futura (2018), the Broad Art Museum in Michigan (2017), and an upcoming solo exhibition at the MIT List Center in 2021. He exhibited work in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, Sculpture Center, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Luma Arles, MoMA Warsaw, the CCS Bard Hessel Museum, the Gwangju Biennial, the Berlin Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou. He has lectured at Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Yale University, UCLA, and Cooper Union, where he is now teaching. His work has been featured in Aperture, Art in America, Artforum, ArtReview, BOMB, Camera Austria, Frieze, The New Yorker, and Wired. He has published writing in Artforum, e-flux, DIS, and a Darren Bader monograph from Koenig Books. He is a recipient of a Dedalus Foundation Fellowship and an Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Le Centre national des arts plastiques France, the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Stolbun Collection, Collection Lambert, and the Kadist Foundation.