An Online TV Station for the Strange, Insightful, and Psychedelic

Cathode TV will feature experimental shorts, bizarre television feeds, and special themed programs.

Banner image for Cathode TV (all images courtesy Jesus Antonio Rivera and Christopher Reid Martin)

Since 2015, the Coaxial Arts Foundation in downtown Los Angeles has offered residences, studios spaces, and exhibition opportunities to artists working with media, sound, and performance. In their words, they seek to “showcase underground artists whose works are often not exhibited in galleries as ephemeral art is not conducive to the gallery sales system.”

Like all art spaces across the city, Coaxial has had to close its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To keep its programming alive, it’s adapting one of its most popular monthly events to the internet, the Cathode Cinema series. Curated by Jesus Antonio Rivera, Christopher Reid Martin, and Jonnie Prey, the series is known for screening rare video art that’s hard to find pretty much anywhere else. Now, you can tune in to their programming from the comfort of your own home.

“[T]he world’s couches remain great safe spaces and luckily film works and animations cannot be affected by the increasing world’s pestilence that is COVID-19,” said Rivera in an email to Hyperallergic. Cathode Cinema is now Cathode TV, and you can indefinitely stream programming Monday through Friday, from 8pm to 8am (PST), on Picarto TV, YouTube Live, and Dlive.

Images from the Coaxial Shorts series

Cathode TV will feature experimental shorts, bizarre television feeds, and special themed programs. One segment will mashup highlights from The Threee Geniuses, a television show that aired from 1996 to 2003, featuring bodybuilders, “religious freakouts,” and “endearing go-go dancing.” Also stay tuned for an evening of experimental Japanese animation (from Keiichi Tanaami to Toshio Matsumoto) and videos from the “wastelands of YouTube.”

In the words of Martin, “We hope Cathode TV can be the channel provider to those in search of the strange and the beautiful, the ugly and life-affirming, the violent and romantic.”