The Cable Project

In late 2004 into early 2005, eight Toronto media artists were given Rogers cable subscriptions.

About the project ↗ Listen to the interviews →
A tied stack of Rogers cable bills at the end of the project
The bills at the end of the project
8artists invited
5recorded conversations
2004–05the experiment
1question: what is TV for?
The proposition

The Cable Project gave eight Toronto media artists a year of Rogers cable television—free, with no strings attached.

In the early 2000s, cable was an expensive luxury, a guilty pleasure, or both. This project treated it as something else: a public resource, a media library, and raw material for an artist’s practice.

Read the project notes →
Browse the archive
01The projectThe proposition, selection process, and committee notes.↗ 02ArtistsThe eight artists who received the subscriptions.↗ 03InterviewsFive recorded conversations with audio and transcripts.↗ 04ArchiveBills, installation views, correspondence, and press.↗
From the archive
“Cable TV is a library and gallery that media artists, due to their relative poverty, don't have access to.”

— Timothy Comeau, in correspondence with RM Vaughan, 2005

Television, before streaming.

The recordings and documents hold a transitional moment: television as a cultural relic, a resource, a distraction, and a source of possibility.

Browse the archive →