About
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Bio
Bio
Dr Adam Kaasa is an award winning and widely-published interdisciplinary scholar, performance artist and institution builder with over 15 years of experience in higher education. Their artistic and research interests span archives, cities, space, feelings, sound, voice, critical dialogue, and performance. In 2012, Adam co-founded and later directed Theatrum Mundi, an international research centre exploring the arts in urban culture.
Adam holds a PhD in Sociology focused on architecture at text, power, modernity, coloniality in Mexico City and an MSc Geography focussed on queer cultural geographies in Canada, both from the London School of Economics and worked for a decade at LSE Cities. Before moving to the UK, Adam completed a BA(Hons) Sociology with a focus on cultural and critical theory, and Latin American Studies at the Universtiy of Alberta. Adam also holds an Associate in Speech and Drama from Trinity College London. Currently Adam is studying to become a Somatic Experiencing (TM) Practitioner with SOS Internationale (2025-27).
Adam’s current research project is a speculative archival exploration of ‘Andromeda’. Methodologically, the project explores the interaction of performance, specifically sound and voice, and public engagement in relation to archival materials from art and scientific histories, suggesting new modes of making public art historical debates. Both a monograph and an 8-part song cycle are being developed, exploring speculative fiction and collective song/singing as possible modes of resonant belonging. Recent performances of ‘Andromeda’ include Matt’s Gallery London (with Trans Voices UK June 2024), Swedenborg Hall London (September 2023), and the Performing Arts Forum France (August 2023). Adam has led workshops on sound, performance and the archive at Boston University, the Royal College of Art, and PAF.
Recent publications on their practice-led research ininclude the journal article ‘How to Relay Relay; of to Follow Andromeda is to Follow the World’ (AA Files, vol. 73, 2023), the book chapter ‘Singing with Soot’ in the edited collection Queereal Secretions (Glasgow School of Arts 2023), and ‘Feeling Bodies of Architecture’ in The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South (Routledge 2022). Adam was awarded an arts research residency with Nicky Coutts and Jess Weisner at UniArts Helsinki in spring 2023, and had a subsequent group show presenting a collective work ‘Weather. Stop. Fiction. Stop.’ combining speculative fiction, performance and voice on issues of climate, identity and grief at Gallery Augusta, Helsinki (June 2023). Uncommon Building (Spirit Duplicator, 2017), Adam's most recent book, documents a collaborative exercise in speculative fiction as a methodology for thinking critically and across disciplines about space, site and the urban.
In 2020 Adam co-founded the Research Collective Fiction Feeling Frame with Dr Thandi Loewenson and Dr David Burns at the Royal College of Art, and was commissioned by the Director of the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture to produce RELAY, a 24-hour durational and dialogic performance. Funded through successful research funding and private funding procured from WePresent, the project involved over 60 participants from around the world in a single durational conversation spanning the world’s time zones and presented at the Teatro Arsenale in Venice, July 2021.
At the RCA, Adam co-leads the MFA in Arts and Humanities with Dr Joanne Tatham where Adam leads the ‘Spatial Feelings’ studio, exploring queer and feminist approaches to affect and emotional geography. Partnering with producer Jen Bulcraig (Rookes), experimental trans artist ILĀ, choreographer Stefan Jovanović, and Martin Hargraeves, Director of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells East, the unit explores ‘sonic belonging’ through archives, sound, movement and place. Previously Adam led the Critical and Historical Studies and the MRes Programme in the School of Architecture where in 2020 they led the ‘Architecture of Loss’ studio, exploring rituals and performance for collective grief in the city. This culminated in a public presentation on ‘Architecture and Loss’ with the Architecture Foundation.
Adam is a founding Steering Committee member of the Sites and Situations research cluster in the School of Arts and Humanities, which considers the way in which art practices operate in the public realm for community cohesion and how artistic interventions have the potential to generate a sense of belonging across differences. Adam is co-founder and co-director with Dr. Barbara Brownie of _SPACE the RCA’s outer space research network, and a founding member of SOUND@RCA, a research cluster exploring sound across performance, moving image, design and space.
Previously Adam was Visiting Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto (2016). Adam led the Designing Politics international design competitions (2014-2017), curating the exhibitions in London (LSE) and Rio de Janeiro (Museu do Amanhã), and co-curated Structures of Revenge with the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens. Adam is a contributing author to The Quito Papers (Routledge, 2018), a joint project between New York University and UN Habitat for Habitat III, and co-produced the subsequent short film with the Kaifeng Foundation (Beijing) with screenings and roundtables in Paris, London, Beijing and Edinburgh (2016–17). Select collaborations include the Venice Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Museu Oscar Niemeyer, the Museu de Arte do Rio and Museu do Amanhã, the University of São Paulo, New York University, Columbia University, MIT, Harvard GSD, the Southbank Centre, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, and the Foundation Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris).
Adam is particularly invested in collaboration and co-authorship as an intellectual ethic, and in exploring the possibilities of radical facilitation for collective thought and action.
Adam holds a PhD in Sociology focused on architecture at text, power, modernity, coloniality in Mexico City and an MSc Geography focussed on queer cultural geographies in Canada, both from the London School of Economics and worked for a decade at LSE Cities. Before moving to the UK, Adam completed a BA(Hons) Sociology with a focus on cultural and critical theory, and Latin American Studies at the Universtiy of Alberta. Adam also holds an Associate in Speech and Drama from Trinity College London. Currently Adam is studying to become a Somatic Experiencing (TM) Practitioner with SOS Internationale (2025-27).
Adam’s current research project is a speculative archival exploration of ‘Andromeda’. Methodologically, the project explores the interaction of performance, specifically sound and voice, and public engagement in relation to archival materials from art and scientific histories, suggesting new modes of making public art historical debates. Both a monograph and an 8-part song cycle are being developed, exploring speculative fiction and collective song/singing as possible modes of resonant belonging. Recent performances of ‘Andromeda’ include Matt’s Gallery London (with Trans Voices UK June 2024), Swedenborg Hall London (September 2023), and the Performing Arts Forum France (August 2023). Adam has led workshops on sound, performance and the archive at Boston University, the Royal College of Art, and PAF.
Recent publications on their practice-led research ininclude the journal article ‘How to Relay Relay; of to Follow Andromeda is to Follow the World’ (AA Files, vol. 73, 2023), the book chapter ‘Singing with Soot’ in the edited collection Queereal Secretions (Glasgow School of Arts 2023), and ‘Feeling Bodies of Architecture’ in The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South (Routledge 2022). Adam was awarded an arts research residency with Nicky Coutts and Jess Weisner at UniArts Helsinki in spring 2023, and had a subsequent group show presenting a collective work ‘Weather. Stop. Fiction. Stop.’ combining speculative fiction, performance and voice on issues of climate, identity and grief at Gallery Augusta, Helsinki (June 2023). Uncommon Building (Spirit Duplicator, 2017), Adam's most recent book, documents a collaborative exercise in speculative fiction as a methodology for thinking critically and across disciplines about space, site and the urban.
In 2020 Adam co-founded the Research Collective Fiction Feeling Frame with Dr Thandi Loewenson and Dr David Burns at the Royal College of Art, and was commissioned by the Director of the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture to produce RELAY, a 24-hour durational and dialogic performance. Funded through successful research funding and private funding procured from WePresent, the project involved over 60 participants from around the world in a single durational conversation spanning the world’s time zones and presented at the Teatro Arsenale in Venice, July 2021.
At the RCA, Adam co-leads the MFA in Arts and Humanities with Dr Joanne Tatham where Adam leads the ‘Spatial Feelings’ studio, exploring queer and feminist approaches to affect and emotional geography. Partnering with producer Jen Bulcraig (Rookes), experimental trans artist ILĀ, choreographer Stefan Jovanović, and Martin Hargraeves, Director of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler’s Wells East, the unit explores ‘sonic belonging’ through archives, sound, movement and place. Previously Adam led the Critical and Historical Studies and the MRes Programme in the School of Architecture where in 2020 they led the ‘Architecture of Loss’ studio, exploring rituals and performance for collective grief in the city. This culminated in a public presentation on ‘Architecture and Loss’ with the Architecture Foundation.
Adam is a founding Steering Committee member of the Sites and Situations research cluster in the School of Arts and Humanities, which considers the way in which art practices operate in the public realm for community cohesion and how artistic interventions have the potential to generate a sense of belonging across differences. Adam is co-founder and co-director with Dr. Barbara Brownie of _SPACE the RCA’s outer space research network, and a founding member of SOUND@RCA, a research cluster exploring sound across performance, moving image, design and space.
Previously Adam was Visiting Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto (2016). Adam led the Designing Politics international design competitions (2014-2017), curating the exhibitions in London (LSE) and Rio de Janeiro (Museu do Amanhã), and co-curated Structures of Revenge with the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens. Adam is a contributing author to The Quito Papers (Routledge, 2018), a joint project between New York University and UN Habitat for Habitat III, and co-produced the subsequent short film with the Kaifeng Foundation (Beijing) with screenings and roundtables in Paris, London, Beijing and Edinburgh (2016–17). Select collaborations include the Venice Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Museu Oscar Niemeyer, the Museu de Arte do Rio and Museu do Amanhã, the University of São Paulo, New York University, Columbia University, MIT, Harvard GSD, the Southbank Centre, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, and the Foundation Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris).
Adam is particularly invested in collaboration and co-authorship as an intellectual ethic, and in exploring the possibilities of radical facilitation for collective thought and action.
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