Peek inside the hippo art piece causing chaos at Coachella 2026
The “Network Operations” art installation at Coachella 2026 features a group of hippos running a media conglomerate. Take a look inside.
Hippos are causing chaos at the 2026 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
In between the Coachella Stage and Outdoor Theatre is a three-story command center with a bunch of rambunctious hippos doing everything in their control to make a mess while they work. While one is taking command of a printing press, another is crooning away in a television studio.
The entertaining scene is the latest chapter in the long-running Hippo Empire, which has been featured at Coachella in the past. With the interactive sculpture “Network Operations,” the hippos run a media conglomerate which includes a newspaper press buzzing with the latest print editions, a video studio that can be transformed into a game show, a radio booth with hippo-DJ chatter and a server room with wires everywhere.
Performers take over every space of the art installation, doing whatever crazy action comes to mind in the moment. For festivalgoers, it means plenty of insane visuals to see all day long.
Artists Derek Doublin and Vanessa Bonet are the creative forces behind these satirical worlds — previous iterations include “Power Station” (2013), “Corporate Headquarters” (2015) and “Hazardous Interstellar Planetary Operations (H.I.P.O.)” (2019).
“The hippos are memetic, so this is a satirical observation about the information ecosystem that shapes public narrative,” Doublin said. “We like to do satire and absurdist humor and lay some thick social commentary underneath it. The hippos are kind of representative of humans, but at the same time, they’re clueless and they hold enormous power.”
The story that “Network Operations” tells is constantly evolving, and the performers themselves get to shape the narrative. Bonet said the hippo actors get to work with each room’s theme and they welcome improv, but there are times when she and Doublin provide them with “loose guidance” on how to act or what storyline to follow.
When they yell action, it’s truly a free-for-all for festivalgoers to take in. Viewing each individual hippo is plenty amusing, but taking them in all together is a true show. Some will be peeking over the roof, shaking their heads at the action beneath them. Others are inside ripping up magnetic tape from cassettes or VHSs, smashing vinyl records or just trying to figure out how to turn a machine.
Attendees can also interact with the hippos by going into a side tunnel, which provides a view to a room full of vintage televisions, or they can listen to recorded messages on a red phone.
Performer Cade Smith is participating in his first hippo installation, an opportunity he couldn’t miss out on. Each moment brings something new and unexpected, he said. He shared on Saturday, April 11, that the hippos will be “taking over the world,” and festivalgoers will just have to tune in to find out what that means.
“Most of the time it’s just a lot of running around,” Smith said. “To be given a mask that you can’t really see out of and some restrictive overalls and hear, ‘OK, do what you want, just make it crazy,’ you really do unleash a part of yourself that normally you can’t.”
It’s an impressive sight and feat to put something of this scale together for the festival, and Doublin said it has gotten more difficult following the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs. However, he praised all his collaborators for their continued work and sacrifices to make it happen.
Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ema_sasic.
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