Radiohead’s bunker piece
Radiohead has debuted a new film-and-art installation at Coachella inside a 17,000‑square‑foot bunker beneath the polo fields, a rare large-scale immersive work from a major band displayed across festival grounds. (musically.com).
Coachella opened on Friday, April 10, with a surprise under the ground: Radiohead put a 75-minute film installation inside a new 17,000-square-foot bunker buried beneath the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California. Festival ticket holders can enter the space during both 2026 weekends instead of finding the project in a museum or a concert hall. (rollingstone.com) The bunker is not a metaphor. USA Today reported that Coachella built a new underground structure for large-format film, and Radiohead is the first act using it for a full-scale visual work rather than a live set on a stage. (usatoday.com) The piece is called “Motion Picture House featuring Kid A Mnesia,” and it pulls from the world around Radiohead’s albums “Kid A” from 2000 and “Amnesiac” from 2001. The images come from work Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood made during that period, with sound built from the original multitrack recordings. (variety.com) This did not start as a bunker show. Radiohead first released “Kid A Mnesia” in 2021 as a virtual exhibition on computers and PlayStation 5 through Epic Games after the Covid-19 period pushed the idea away from a physical build. (musically.com) Sean Evans directed that earlier version, and the new installation turns the same material back into the kind of walk-through environment the band originally wanted. Slant reported that the physical experience had been the plan before it became a digital world during lockdown-era delays. (slantmagazine.com) Rolling Stone said the bunker has 38-foot ceilings, which gives the film room to feel less like a screening and more like stepping inside an oversized archive. Yorke described the story as a “Monster” trapped in a derelict museum filled with lost and forgotten things. (rollingstone.com) That setting fits the albums it comes from. “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” were the records where Radiohead moved away from guitar-band expectations and into colder electronics, fractured voices, and artwork that looked like warning signs from a damaged future. (musically.com) Coachella has long scattered giant sculptures and architecture across the polo fields, but its own art page still describes those works as outdoor landmarks and public spaces. Radiohead’s project shifts that tradition underground and makes the festival itself part cinema, part exhibition venue. (coachella.com) The band is not performing inside the bunker. Variety and Rolling Stone both said this is a standalone installation, and after Coachella it moves into multi-week residencies in Brooklyn, Chicago, Mexico City, and San Francisco through early 2027. (variety.com) (rollingstone.com) That makes the Coachella debut feel less like a festival side quest and more like an opening night. A band whose key records are 25 and 26 years old is using one of the biggest pop festivals in the United States to launch an art-house installation tour instead of a reunion-style nostalgia set. (coachella.com) (variety.com)
