Talk

Technology and Power 001

Shumon Basar, Jaya Klara Brekke, Konstantinos Meichanetzidis

Date and Time:: Thursday 23 Oct 2025, 6:30pm - 8pm

A new technological reality is pressing upon us: quantum, AI, and our daily digital infrastructures are increasingly doubling up as weapons systems intertwined with genocide and war. How are emerging technologies shaping and enacting power?

Technology and Power is a discussion series hosted by Dr Jaya Klara Brekke, gathering technologists and activists at the forefront of a new technological reality. The series examines what it means to inhabit a world of extreme contradictions and to conspire together towards an anti-fascist technological future.

Technology and Power 001
Is quantum computing a liberatory technology? Or will it multiply the concentration of capital and power?

This first session examines the entangled nature of technological innovation with curator Shumon Basar hosting Jaya Klara Brekke in discussion with quantum scientist Konstantinos Meichanetzidis.

Shumon Basar has been a strategic advisor for Ibraaz, shaping the inaugural public programme, and curating Ibrahim Mahama’s installation Parliament of Ghosts (2025-26). With two decades experience in the Gulf, other roles have included Commissioner of Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum; Public Programme Curator at Art Week Riyadh; Expert Advisory Group for the Royal Commission of AlUla; founding member of Fondazione Prada’s ‘Thought Council’; Co-founder at web3 startup Zien; and Public Programs Director at the Architectural Association. He is co-author of The Extreme Self and The Age of Earthquakes, both with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and his books on the region include With/Without and Cities from Zero. Shumon has held editorial positions at the magazines TANK, Bidoun, 032c, Flash Art, and as Curator-in-residence at Zora Zine, where he produced a trilogy of pieces around his viral neologism, ‘Lorecore’.

Jaya Klara Brekke works on power and technology in theory and practice. In theory, she writes and speaks on decentralised organisational models, the political economies of emerging tech and their entanglement with changes in sovereignty, culture and agency. In practice, she is Chief Strategy Officer at Nym, a decentralised privacy platform to enable digital integrity as a fundamental right. In this capacity, her aim is to blockade the mass surveillance business model that fuels the current centralisation of power via crypto and AI. She is an occasional advisor to the European Commission and was awarded a PhD from Durham University for her thesis: Disassembling the Trust Machine, three cuts on the political matter of blockchain.

Konstantinos Meichanetzidis is an interdisciplinary scientist working at the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. At Quantinuum, as Head of Product and co-author of the applications roadmap and AI strategy, he leads the development of end-to-end algorithmic pipelines to quantify and identify quantum advantage. He previously held the 1851 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Univ. Oxford and the EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship at Univ. Leeds, where he also earned his PhD on applying notions of quantum information science to many-body physics. He believes extending healthspan is the ultimate scientific goal. Having also worked at the intersection of art and science, he advises for Moth, a startup developing quantum applications for the creative industries.

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Technology and Power 001

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