In a dimly lit, cavernous space stand shelves of glitching television sets. Nearby, posters wheat-pasted on corrugated steel surfaces hold strange images and cryptic poetry. “My brains are scrambled eggs,” reads one. Throughout, sculptures of stick figures are curled into despairing stances, while large prints of alien landscapes offer the only hints of a world outside. No, it’s not a post-apocalyptic fever dream; it’s a Radiohead art installation.
“Motion Picture House,” the band’s roving audiovisual spectacle, has landed in a warehouse at Brooklyn Navy Yards in New York, where it is on view through June, following its debut at Coachella Festival last month. Deposited by 12 large trucks, the immersive exhibition draws from the eerie aesthetic of the Radiohead albums Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), as well as art created by frontman Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood. The experience culminates with a 75-minute film.
Installation view of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture House.” Photo: Min Chen.
It’s the installation that first greets visitors. The television screens glow through the smoky atmosphere, playing animation loops, footage of the band in the studio, and things on fire. Blow-ups of Kid A artwork tower loom over us, as does a massive stick figure statue, collapsed in a corner beside large windows pouring in light. Fans will also spot Radiohead motifs scattered throughout the show—the crying minotaur, the grinning bear, among others.
Installation view of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture House.” Photo: Min Chen.
These disquieting elements make sense with a viewing of the film, KID A MNESIA, directed by Sean Evans. The work debuted on PS5 and Epic Games Store in 2021, marking the 20th anniversary of the two albums; here, it fills four giant tilted screens in a theater that rises 25 feet, with a speaker system calibrated to the venue. Visitors are welcome to drape themselves anywhere around the screening room.
The animated film follows a minotaur-esque creature as it travels through a maze of dreamlike chambers—or what Yorke called “a derelict museum of the lost and forgotten.” One room is hexagonal, another has walls made of flapping paper, and yet another is red. And yes, one is stacked with old television sets. Along the way, our monster encounters stick figures, runes, and an even larger version of itself, which prowls around on pointed legs like one of Salvador Dalí’s elephants.
Installation view of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture House.” Photo: Kate Izor.
Accompanying the images are tracks from Kid A and Amnesiac, remixed by Radiohead’s long-time producer Nigel Godrich. Songs like “Everything in Its Right Place,” “Morning Bell,” “You and Whose Army?” and “Motion Picture Soundtrack” lend the proceedings an elegiac tone; the new mix of “Idioteque” sounds downright sensational.
The entire exhibition is a compelling piece of world-building for Radiohead, whose visual language has increasingly come into focus, with Yorke and Donwood emerging as artists in their own right. Besides two shows of original works at Tin Man Art in London (and one currently ongoing in Venice), the duo also staged the 2025 retrospective “This Is What You Get” at Ashmolean Museum in the U.K., revisiting decades’ worth of collaborative art for Radiohead.
Installation view of Radiohead’s “Motion Picture House.” Photo: Kate Izor.
For a group whose visual universe has been so central to its mystique, translating that aesthetic into physical space without puncturing its enigma takes a certain finesse. Walking through the show in the footsteps of the band’s minotaur only winds the visitor deeper into its labyrinth, which perhaps is the point.
But unlike the mythical beast, we get a clear exit from “Motion Picture House.” It leads, of course, through the gift shop.
“Motion Picture House” is on view in Brooklyn, New York, through June 28; Chicago, July 30–August 23; Mexico City, October 27–November 15; and San Francisco, January 14–February 7, 2027.
