Documentaries by Jaya Klara Brekke
Future Suspended
crisis-scape.net, Mar 1, 2014
How does a global financial crisis permeate the spaces of the everyday in a city? Our final 35' d... more How does a global financial crisis permeate the spaces of the everyday in a city? Our final 35' documentary film traces the multiple transformations of crisis-ridden Athenian public space and those who traverse it. Future Suspended is divided in three sections. “Privatised” explores the legacy of mass privatisation projects that preceded the 2004 Olympics, placing them in the context of present day privatisation schemes. “Devalued” gazes at the ever-shrinking spaces of migrants in the city and the devaluation of their lives that comes as a result. “Militarised” shows how, in face of the crisis, this devaluation turns into a generalised condition. Through its cinematic traversal of today's Athens, "Future Suspended" traces the rise of the authoritarian-financial complex and how this shrinks public space in the city, fuelling social despair and anger in return. Future Suspended is part of the research project at crisis-scape.net. The research team consists of Christos Filippidis, Antonis Vradis, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Ross Domoney and Jaya Klara Brekke. All music for Future Suspended was composed by Giorgos Triantafyllou. This film is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence. Details here: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_GB
Books by Jaya Klara Brekke
The White Paper
The White Paper, 2019
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published a revolutiona... more In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto published a revolutionary white paper that described a simple peer-to-peer electronic cash system that would later become Bitcoin. In the decade since the launch of the digital currency, the nascent blockchain technology behind Bitcoin has been heralded as having the same radical potential as the printing press or the Internet, in particular presenting extraordinary challenges to traditional banking. Yet the paper contains no reference to existing political ideas, monetary or economic knowledge. Why?
The White Paper returns to Nakamoto's canonical text as a Rosetta Stone that reveals the far-reaching implications of decentralisation, with crypto-economist Jaya Klara Brekke's Guide demonstrating how it can serve as the compass for a rapidly shifting terrain of contemporary techno-politics.
The introduction by James Bridle, leading technologist, artist and author of New Dark Age, situates Bitcoin within an obscure historical movement, powered by the ideologies of encryption, showing how blockchain is part of a wider project to redraw the maps of political possibility.
Published by crisis-scape.net This publication is part of the City at a Time of Crisis project h... more Published by crisis-scape.net This publication is part of the City at a Time of Crisis project http://www.crisis-scape.net Funded by the ESRC Designed by Jaya Klara Brekke Photography by Ross Domoney (pages 42, 102, 166 and 206) Antonis Vradis (pages 62, 91 - 101) Dimitris Dalakoglou (page 8) Andreas Chatzidakis (page 32) Printed in Athens by Synthesi http://synthesi-print.gr Edited by Jaya Klara Brekke, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Christos Filippidis and Antonis Vradis. Chapters 15 and 22 translated from Greek by Antonis Vradis ISBN: 978-1-938660-15-3
Papers by Jaya Klara Brekke
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Oct 1, 2022
In the first essay, I examine the shift from commons to NFTs through the lens of the unresolved i... more In the first essay, I examine the shift from commons to NFTs through the lens of the unresolved issue of the form of digital property against the crisis of copyright. Both commons and NFTs can be understood as answers to the fact that copying is one of the basic operations of the digital. In the second text, Yukiko Shikata Yukiko Shikata draws on experiments by Japanese artists on the potential of NFTs to express relationships with the non-human world and new forms of ecological awareness. Michelle Kasprzak Michelle Kasprzak brings to the fore examples of how some NFT projects, in contrast to the dominant trend of financial speculation, both express critical attitudes and contribute in a positive way to larger social/ cultural projects. Dennis Roio Dennis Roio, aka Jaromil aka Jaromil, offers his deep techno-political perspective on how "crypto" could contribute to the commons and translate the technical decentralisation of the infrastructure into political decentralisation. Cornelia Sollfrank Cornelia Sollfrank examines how the production and sale of NFTs affect her own artistic practice and impact a gallery that previously had no relationship to the art market. Jaya Jaya Klara Brekke Klara Brekke focuses on the desires for community that drive many crypto projects. Lee Tzu Tung Lee Tzu Tung draws on artistic projects in Hong Kong and Taiwan as ways of articulating forms of property that escape the old colonial matrix. Now that the hype around NFTs has subsided, the ideas and experiences expressed in these seven texts are more important than ever. Even though neither the dreams of the commons nor of NFTs have come to fruition -personally,
Internet Policy Review, 2021
The rapidly evolving blockchain technology space has put decentralisation back into the focus of ... more The rapidly evolving blockchain technology space has put decentralisation back into the focus of the design of techno-social systems, and the role of decentralised technological infrastructures in achieving particular social, economic, or political goals. In this entry we address how blockchains and distributed ledgers think about decentralisation.
Peer-to-peer networks and protocols have inspired new ideas and ideologies about governance, with... more Peer-to-peer networks and protocols have inspired new ideas and ideologies about governance, with the aim of using technology to enable horizontal and decentralized decision-making at scale. This article introduces the concept of “dissensus” from political theory to debates about peer governance in online communities. Dissensus describes the emergence of incompatible differences. Among peer-to-peer technologies, blockchain stands out as a set of ideas that explicitly seek to resolve dissensus through consensus protocols. In this article, we propose dissensus as a “protocol” for foregrounding the often sidelined yet productive aspects of incompatible differences. The concept highlights that there might not always be consensus about a consensus algorithm, and that indeed, dissensus is the precondition for new possibilities and perspectives to emerge. We discuss the concept in relation to the histories of governance ideas in blockchain, namely, a “materialist,” “design,” and “emergent”...
EUR 30364 EN This publication is a Science for Policy report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), ... more EUR 30364 EN This publication is a Science for Policy report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that might be made of this publication. For information on the methodology and quality underlying the data used in this publication for which the source is neither Eurostat nor other Commission services, users should contact the referenced source. The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the European Union concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
NEXt generation Techno-social Legal Encryption Access and Privacy nextleap.eu
Field Research and User Requirements Digital social currency pilots
This report provides a background for building a framework for implementing and federating digita... more This report provides a background for building a framework for implementing and federating digital complementary currency experiences, and for improving their social benefits. Enabling communities to manage exchange using alternative digital social currencies as new tools for growing a civic sharing economy, including a strong role for interoperable digital social currencies remains the principal goal.
Strange encounters
City, 2014
Debates about migration tend to force a representation of migrants into two categories: criminal ... more Debates about migration tend to force a representation of migrants into two categories: criminal or victim. Both of these categories feed each other and form the basis for discourses that substantiate the need for detention prisons and the incarceration of migrants. Map.crisis-scape.net is an online map of racist attacks with a focus on Athens, Greece. One aim of the map has been to attempt a different type of representation of the issues surrounding migration that does not place the migrant at the centre of attention, but instead focuses on the violent conditions that affect their lives.
New Political Economy, 2020
She is expert advisor to the European Commission on blockchain and disruptive technologies, and f... more She is expert advisor to the European Commission on blockchain and disruptive technologies, and founding member of Magma Collective think and do tank. She is also the co-author of The White Paper, a historical contextualisation of the Bitcoin white paper (Ignota press 2019) and contributes to cultural, policy and industry debates on blockchain, cryptography, data politics and the development of decentralised network technologies.
Internet Policy Review
Decentralisation as a concept is attracting a lot of interest, not least with the rise of decentr... more Decentralisation as a concept is attracting a lot of interest, not least with the rise of decentralised and distributed techno-social systems like Bitcoin, and distributed ledgers more generally. In this paper, we first define decentralisation as it is implemented for technical architectures and then discuss the technical, social, political and economic ideas that drive the development of decentralised, and in particular, distributed systems. We argue that technical efforts towards decentralisation tend to go hand-in-hand with ambitions for rearranging power dynamics. We caution, however, against simplistic understandings of power in relation to the decentralisation-centralisation spectrum, and argue that in practice, decentralisation might very well be served by and produce centralising effects. The paper then goes on to discuss the critical literature that highlights some of the common assumptions and critiques made about decentralisation and the pros and cons of a decentralised approach. Finally, we propose some of the missing parts to current debates about decentralisation, and argue for a more nuanced and grounded approach to the centralisation/decentralisation dichotomy. Issue 2 This article belongs to Concepts of the digital society, a special section of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Christian Katzenbach and Thomas Christian Bächle.
Blockchain technology is, in part, a proposal to resolve ‘the political’ through technical means:... more Blockchain technology is, in part, a proposal to resolve ‘the political’ through technical means: decentralised networks to solve the problem of authority; cryptography to coordinate and secure the network; and game theory and incentive design to solve network behaviour. This PhD thesis draws on theoretical work by Karen Barad (2007) and Jacques Ranciere (Ranciere, 2010) to ask the question of what matters politically in blockchain technology – both in the sense of matter as becoming material of a new mediation of the political, but also mattering in the sense of being of political importance to engineers, developers and communities forming around blockchain as a potential. Rather than treating blockchain as coherent thing to be either celebrated or criticised, this thesis proposes and attempts to draw out the ways in which the potentials of blockchain are negotiated as part of its political effects, looking towards these negotiations to understand how political differences are made...
Cryptoeconomics
Internet Policy Review
Writing in a movement: a roundtable on radical publishing and autonomous infrastructure
Internet Policy Review, 2021
Digital Scarcity is a credibly maintained limitation, imposed through software, of digital inform... more Digital Scarcity is a credibly maintained limitation, imposed through software, of digital information, goods or services that may be accessed and used entirely digitally. Issue 2 This article belongs to the Glossary of decentralised technosocial systems, a special section of Internet Policy Review. Definition Digital Scarcity is a credibly maintained limitation, imposed through software, of digital information, goods or services that may be accessed and used entirely digitally.
Athens after the Olympics: the making of the film Future suspended
Internet Policy Review vol 10, issue 2, 2021
Decentralisation as a concept is attracting a lot of interest, not least with the rise of decentr... more Decentralisation as a concept is attracting a lot of interest, not least with the rise of decentralised and distributed techno-social systems like Bitcoin, and distributed ledgers more generally. In this paper, we first define decentralisation as it is implemented for technical architectures and then discuss the technical, social, political and economic ideas that drive the development of decentralised, and in particular, distributed systems. We argue that technical efforts towards decentralisation tend to go hand-in-hand with ambitions for rearranging power dynamics. We caution, however, against simplistic understandings of power in relation to the decentralisation-centralisation spectrum, and argue that in practice, decentralisation might very well be served by and produce centralising effects. The paper then goes on to discuss the critical literature that highlights some of the common assumptions and critiques made about decentralisation and the pros and cons of a decentralised approach. Finally, we propose some of the missing parts to current debates about decentralisation, and argue for a more nuanced and grounded approach to the centralisation/decentralisation dichotomy.
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Documentaries by Jaya Klara Brekke
Books by Jaya Klara Brekke
The White Paper returns to Nakamoto's canonical text as a Rosetta Stone that reveals the far-reaching implications of decentralisation, with crypto-economist Jaya Klara Brekke's Guide demonstrating how it can serve as the compass for a rapidly shifting terrain of contemporary techno-politics.
The introduction by James Bridle, leading technologist, artist and author of New Dark Age, situates Bitcoin within an obscure historical movement, powered by the ideologies of encryption, showing how blockchain is part of a wider project to redraw the maps of political possibility.
Papers by Jaya Klara Brekke