Luís Fernandes (1981) is a musician, sound artist and curator based in Braga, Portugal. His work is developed within the domains of musical composition, performance and art curating. He’s a teacher on Minho University’s Visual Arts degree and Media Art master degree.
Besides a consistent work in the exploratory electronic music domain, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists in the past years, including some key figures of modern portuguese music and international artists, such as Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Rhys Chatham and Toshimaru Nakamura.
He also composes music for cinema, video and installations, including the film Mahjong, by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, presented at Cannes and Locarno festivals, and the exhibition Porto Poetic, an homage to the architects Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto Moura, in the Triennale di Milano and Museum of Modern Art – MoMa.
His work has been reviewed and highlighted by publications such as The Wire, The Arts Desk, Guardian, The Liminal, No Modest Bear, Visitation Rites, Les Inrockuptibles and several portuguese publications.
He was guest lecturer at Berklee College of Music, Elektra – Festival d’arts numériques (Montreal), Serralves Foundation, Off the page – The Wire, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, MAAT and Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (Porto).
Luis Fernandes was the artistic director of Semibreve Festival, between 2011 and 2023, and is currently the artistic director of Theatro Circo, gnration, Index – art and technology biennial, besides supervising the program of Braga25 – Portuguese Capital of Culture.
He was part of the application committee of the Braga UNESCO Creative City for the Media Arts (2015-2017) and is the responsible for the artistic coordination of the project. He’s part of the EMAP (European Media Art Platform) curator’s committee. He has commissioned works to artists including Phill Niblock, Mark Fell, Stephan Mathieu, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Tarik Barri, Hans- Joachim Roedelius, Jim O’Rourke, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Beatriz Ferreyra, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Sarah Davachi, AGF e Zimoun.