Welcome.
I'm a Creative Director. Lots of other things, too.
I care about art, media, and technology.I run chumbo, Big Lisbon, and Boxing Lisboa. Read more, or talk to me about my work.Bissau, Praia, Lisbon, Macau, Hong Kong, London, Chicago, Amsterdam, Tunis, Brussels, Paris, Casablanca, Milan, Bujumbura - these are places I have lived in, been to, and would like to see again.I am now thinking a lot about games, synthetic biology, and ethics in the 21st century. I take notes.Thank you for being here.
Yuri Sousa Lopes Pereira was born twice, in Bissau, in 1979. He’s been moving ever since.
He has many cousins, two sisters, two fathers, one mother. One love. Two daughters.
Because of a strange mix-up at the embassy, he is both a Scorpio and a Sagittarius.Growing up happened between Praia and Lisbon, books and television, music and sports. Then Macau happened, at 13. Nothing would ever be the same again. He starts working in radio at 15 and by the time he first goes to college, art and politics have taken over mind and body, impossible not to drop out. The end of the 20th century finds him travelling across Europe and beyond, writing, playing, loving, questioning everything and standing up for what felt right. He is 20 at the turn of the millennium, when the towers fall, when the global mood changes irrevocably. Looking back, he is still impressed by how much that American September affected the collective mind, and his. The road becomes less frequent, music takes on a larger role and suddenly going back to school doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, after all. Communications, an old flame, is the obvious choice. What follows is a new life, in Brussels, with new projects, new languages, new people. He learns what it means to be an adult, a professional, to be reborn.The twenty-teens mark the beginning of what he considers to be his prime, confident that things have strangely come full circle and youthful dreams are now becoming a consistent part of reality. As always, Yuri looks out into the world with great optimism and a sense of the inevitability of a better future.He is a happy man.
Yuri Lopes Pereira
portfolio
Big Lisbon is a creative agency specialized in brand strategy and multimedia narratives.We offer bespoke services, focused attention, and a unique creative vision.The world is huge.
Boxing Lisboa is an event promotion and book publishing brand.We promote and document the practice of Olympic and professional Boxing.
chumbo is a contemporary art gallery.Our creative research is focused on social and philosophical issues, through the practice of Photography, Video, Illustration, Performance, Music and Software.
FAULT / FALHA is a creative project that explores the fragmentation and discontinuity of space, discourse, culture, and community — everywhere in the world.I curated the full project from 2021 to 2023.
We ran an international Open Call and hosted a series of Exhibitions with featured artists at chumbo.
"What does the internet sound like?" was an Open Call for sound art. I curated the call for stress.fm, a digital radio station based in Lisbon.***While we speak of clouds and are invisibly linked to them, a vast and heavy infrastructure is needed to support the internet: from transoceanic submarine cables to large data centers on the edge of town, from servers and robots to call center and factory workers. Global capitalism makes noise.When so many of the world’s decision processes are hidden from view, or recombined and filtered through the 24-hour news cycle, what is the role of sound in understanding contemporary politics?How can we decipher, reveal, or keep the world’s secrets by listening to its digital communication system?Computers talk to each other all the time, in code and in voltage, almost telepathically and at the speed of light. This is a conversation that excludes those of us unable to read between the lines or who are deaf to this soft music. To live in the world today is to be surrounded by a constant humming, the body electric, the senses extended and transformed by all that we own, all that we have built. We live inside the machines.What does it sound like?
Between June and September 2017, I produced and curated a series of talks in Lisbon called #micronetworks.This was a public conversation about the future of networked communication - focusing on the way that blockchains, cryptocurrencies, tokens and their resulting networks of interest and investment represent the beginning of a new conversation about information architectures.
PUNCH is a photography book by Jürgen Bürgin. It's an intimate and revealing journey into the world of boxing in New York, Berlin and Lisbon.The book is an immersive and dark visual narrative that follows boxing fighters and clubs from the training and preparation phase to the thrill of the fight, and the moment of victory. A dramatic, evocative and emotional look into the vivid details of a classic sport with a universal influence on popular culture.Published by chumbo, 2022
128 pages, including a booklet.
Hardcover 30 x 25 cm / English
Boxing Lisboa: Archive is a photography book by Gustavo Lopes Pereira. It documents the Olympic Boxing scene in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area between 2015 and 2017.It's the first book of photographic and artistic documentation of Boxing in Portugal.Published by Boxing Lisboa, 2022
154 pages
Softcover Magazine 22 x 28,5 cm / English & Portuguese
Since 1997, between Macau, Brussels, Chicago, Amsterdam and Lisbon, I've been a musician, producer, manager, agent, promoter, and record label owner.
SELECTED WORKS
"Boxing Lisboa 2023" - Live show, Lisbon, 2023Wilson Twice "The Surplus" - Digital release, Lisbon, 2017M.I.G. 27 "Neverlands" - CD and digital release, Amsterdam, 2008Reminder "Headlines" - DVD and digital release, Lisbon, 2004La Haine "SÃndrome Colonial" - Vinyl, 7", EP, 33 â…“ RPM, Limited Orange Edition, Macau and Strasbourg, 1997
I started working in radio at 15, in Macau. Hosting shows, designing soundscapes and practicing the lost art of listening carefully.In Brussels, I produced a show on Radio Panik that got picked up by a couple fo other stations and the Radia European network. Back in Lisbon, in 2013, I co-founded a digital radio station called stress.fm The current podcast wave is long and will continue to transform radio. I now host and produce various podcasts, for fun and work.
Radio Panik 105.4 FM / Brussels2009 - 2013
The Complex Days
A podcast about the fragmentation of space, culture, and community.Artists and academics discuss technological and social fractures in societies all over the world.
A podcast about love and relationships, trials and tribulations, humanity and all our lives.A Big Lisbon production.
Producing and directing moving images is both a passion and a vocation.
"À frente do tempo" ( Ahead of time ) is a 2023 short film about Time Banks. It was commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the network in Portugal. I co-directed it.
"Headlines" is a 2004 short film about hypermedia and cybernetics. It was written and produced by REMINDER, a creative collective based in Lisbon and Amsterdam.
I write non-fiction articles, book chapters, and newsletters about culture, society, and technology.
SELECTED WORKS
The Blind Machine - Newsletter about culture and technology, 2023The networked shape of future audio - On the trends shaping the contemporary radio industry, 20235 Statements about Boxing - Boxing Lisboa: Arquivo/Archive, 2022The Internet of Kings - On techno-feudalism and global digital platforms, 2016How to talk like a machine - On how to impersonate digital systems in fiction and the real world, 2016Luz e Sangue - On biology and the digital universe, 2014
I consult with people, businesses, and institutions about their brand strategies. I lead multidisciplinary teams across different sectors including European science, real estate, human resources, finance, and the arts. Together, we develop engaging content and events that resonates and connects with the right audiences at the right time.
I speak with audiences about the links between culture, technology, and everyday life, exploring how they intersect and impact one another across the world.I seek to engage through informal discussions, structured talks and workshops, sparking thoughtful dialogue among individuals and communities.
