24th November 2026, ICA London.

“Computer programmer/beekeeper Jacob gets a “television” implanted in his brain by a race of telekinetic bees, which causes him to experience severe hallucinations.” So goes the setup for David Blair’s unclassifiable 1991 work Wax, Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, but this description only encapsulates a portion of the hyper-digressive, decidedly peculiar contents of this singular, visually arresting film. Part cyberpunk essay, part surrealist faux documentary, and part prismatically polygonal video art experiment, the film, which holds the unusual accolade of becoming, in May 1993 and at two frames-per-second, the first film ever streamed over the internet, is unlike much else made before or since. A film ahead of, and outside of, its own time, across its discursive and colourful journey, it muses on topics including space and time travel, science fiction, myth-making, bees, war, and violence, and, through its dense and abstract aesthetics, offers an acute audiovisual expression of the era of post-internet information overload it presages. Having become a cult film on account of its idiosyncratic and psychedelic qualities and its William S. Burroughs cameo, Wax has an enthusiastic online fanbase with which its still active, still innovating filmmaker maintains an active dialogue. Showing on the occasion of its thirty-fifth anniversary, in reference to the method by which the filmmaker originally self-distributed the film on homemade videotapes, Wax will be projected from a VHS copy created especially for the screening. Several bootlegs will be on sale at the event.

Wax, Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (David Blair | 1991 | USA/Germany | 85’)