Rui Chaves (Santiago do Cacém, 1983) is a sound artist and performer. Rui did his undergrad studies in Som e Imagem at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design Caldas da Rainha, and had a formative experience in a dance organisation called c-e-m: centro em movimento. He received a scholarship from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian to undertake a Master in Sonic Arts.

In October 2013, he finished a PhD at the SARC (Queen’s University Belfast) with funding from Fundação Ciência e Tecnologia. This practice-based research explored a “relational” and “post-medium” approach, through a practice inspired by different forms of contemporary performance. This praxis foregrounds a discussion of presence — both physical and authorial — in the process of making sound art: an endeavour that is informed by a contemporary critical inquiry and exploration of the thematics of body, place, text and technology. This conceptual framework reflects an on-going interdisciplinary sound based artistic practice: site-specific interventions; video art; mixed-media installation; and community art projects. Currently, he focuses on the development of a postcolonial historiography that describes contemporary sound practices produced in the Global South . Between 2015-2018, he was a postdoctoral researcher at NuSom: Research Centre on Sonology (University of São Paulo), having developed an online art archive of Brazilian sound Art (www.nendu.net).