Radiohead’s bunker art at Coachella
Coachella’s two weekends (April 10 and April 17) will feature Radiohead’s KID A MNESIA bunker as an art installation debut — it’s an immersive visual piece tied to the band, not a surprise concert. Festival guides are flagging the bunker as a standout experiential art activation amid Coachella’s broader art program ( ).
A lot of people saw “the bunker debut of Radiohead KID A MNESIA” on the Coachella poster and wondered if the festival had hidden a surprise set underground. It did not: Coachella’s April 10–12 and April 17–19 weekends are getting a Radiohead visual installation, not a Radiohead concert. (creators.yahoo.com, yahoo.com) The installation is called Motion Picture House: KID A MNESIA, and Radiohead is opening it first at Coachella before taking versions of it to Brooklyn on May 6–31, Chicago on July 30–August 23, Mexico City on October 27–November 15, and San Francisco on January 14–February 7, 2027. The official site says the touring show is a large-scale audiovisual installation and art gallery built around KID A MNESIA. (kida-mnesia.com, consequence.net) What people will actually walk into at Coachella is a purpose-built underground bunker at the Empire Polo Club. Reports describing the space say it is 17,000 square feet with 38-foot ceilings, which makes this less like a merch pop-up and more like a temporary museum buried under the festival grounds. (rollingstone.com, jambands.com) The core of the piece is a 75-minute film built from artwork Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood made during the Kid A and Amnesiac era. The official site says the movie is blended with the architecture of the house, so the room itself is part of the work instead of just a screen on a wall. (kida-mnesia.com, billboard.com) That connection goes back more than two decades. Kid A came out in 2000, Amnesiac followed in 2001, and KID A MNESIA was the 2021 combined reissue that turned that period of Radiohead’s music and imagery into one shared world. (kida-mnesia.com, rollingstone.com) This is also not the first form KID A MNESIA has taken. Slant reports the project was originally planned as a physical experience, then became a virtual world released through the Epic Games Store and on PlayStation 5 during the coronavirus pandemic years, and now it is finally being built as a real place people can stand inside. (slantmagazine.com) The sound is being rebuilt for the room too. The official site says the soundtrack uses new mixes drawn from the Kid A and Amnesiac multitracks in 6-point surround sound and spatial audio, which means the music is being arranged to move around the space instead of just blasting straight ahead from a stage. (kida-mnesia.com) Coachella attendees do not need to treat this like a secret-ticket side event. Coverage of the launch says all festival ticketholders can enter the bunker at Coachella, while the later city runs will use advance ticket sales and timed visits. (rollingstone.com, kida-mnesia.com) That is why festival guides keep flagging the bunker as one of the weekend’s standout attractions. At a festival that already sells itself as an art-and-music spectacle, Radiohead’s contribution is a 75-minute underground film-and-gallery environment tied to one of the band’s most visually distinctive album eras, not a band walking onstage unannounced. (creators.yahoo.com, musically.com)
