Real-time for Pirate Cinema

Nicolas Maigret is a critical media artist and curator. In the Pirate Cinema, he explores piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing of audio-visual contents: a monitoring machine shows P2P transfers in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The P2P Sharing protocol is based on small-sample file fragmentation: when all the “chunks” have been downloaded, the file can then be reconstructed sample by sample until completion, from chaotic scraps received from distinct users around the world. In this essay, Geoff Cox (Associate Professor at the Dept. of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University, and Adjunct Faculty at Transart Institute) opens up a discussion on the temporal complexity and the radical montage of multiple realities reflected in the project Pirate Cinema. Understanding temporality at different speeds, levels and scales means beginning to unfold a more nuanced understanding of different kinds of time existing simultaneously across different geo-political contexts.