Coachella’s giant hippo office
A massive Coachella installation called 'Network Operations' — more than 60 feet tall and featuring giant hippos staged in a fictional office — has become a major crowd draw and blends spectacle with a pointed message. (Festival coverage also flags a new 'Bunker' space, where Radiohead is presenting a Kid A/Amnesiac audiovisual takeover, and headlines this year include Karol G as Coachella’s first-ever Latina headliner.) (kesq.com) (latimes.com)
The strangest office at Coachella this year is run by giant hippos, and it rises more than 60 feet near the main stage. The installation is called “Network Operations,” and festivalgoers have been treating it like a second headliner. (kesq.com) The setup is not random desert weirdness. The artists built it as a fictional international corporate headquarters where hippos operate a global media company. (kesq.com) That joke lands because Coachella has long treated art as part landmark, part public square, not just decoration between sets. The festival’s own art page says curators bring in large-scale works meant to function as icons and gathering spaces across the Empire Polo Field. (coachella.com) The hippos also come with history. The collective Dedo Vabo says the characters were born at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk in 2011, then came to Coachella in 2013 with “Power Station” and returned in 2015 with “Corporate Headquarters.” (coachella.com) So “Network Operations” reads like the latest chapter in a running sitcom about power, bureaucracy and animals in charge. KESQ says the same creative team has kept returning to humor, corporate imagery and surreal storytelling, which is why a hippo office can feel both silly and pointed at once. (kesq.com) The message underneath the spectacle is about media itself. Organizers told KESQ the piece is meant to reflect how information, branding and messaging are produced at scale, and how modern media systems can feel interconnected and hard to interpret from the outside. (kesq.com) That makes the giant office a neat fit for Coachella 2026, which is full of experiences built like worlds instead of simple stages. The festival added a new underground space called the Bunker, and Radiohead is using it for a 75-minute “Kid A Mnesia” film and art installation made from sketches, collages, notes and audio fragments tied to “Kid A” and “Amnesiac.” (coachella.com, nme.com) The Bunker is not a side room with a projector. Reporting from the site describes a purpose-built subterranean cavern between the Sahara tent and the Do Lab with room for about 300 people, while NME reports roughly 17,000 square feet and 38-foot ceilings. (aol.com, nme.com) The music lineup is making its own history too. Karol G is scheduled to headline the Sunday shows on April 12 and April 19, becoming the first Latina headliner in the festival’s history. (eonline.com) Put together, this year’s Coachella looks less like a field full of stages and more like a temporary city with its own landmarks, tunnels and mascots. The giant hippo office works because it gives that city a villainous boardroom, then asks people to laugh at the machinery while they stare up at it. (coachella.com, kesq.com)
