One of the real highlights of the New York art calendar rolls around this month in the form of the third edition of the visual-art-performance biennial Performa, which with some justification claims to have "set a new standard for the positioning of live performance in the international contemporary-art world." Running this year for three weeks from November 1 and presenting more than 80 artists in collaboration with 60 arts institutions and 25 curators, Performa is the brainchild of RoseLee Goldberg, one of the world’s greatest performance-art enthusiasts. An art-history graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (first published in 1979 and still probably the most influential book on the subject), Goldberg was curator of the Kitchen between 1978 and 1983, during its crucially important years in SoHo, before establishing Performa, in 2004. While the festival was in its last few weeks of preparation this fall, she spoke to Modern Painters about her ambitions for it and about its 10 new commissions. But we began by talking about art history.

RoseLee, you’re an art historian by training, and Performa always seems to be looking over its shoulder at the history of performance art. Why is that?

Yes, there’s been a historical component to each biennial. In fact, one of the reasons for starting Performa was to explain the history once and for all. There’s this wonderful 100-year history. It changed the 20th century, and we’ve got to go back and reveal it, and think about it, and bring it to life in the most lively, intoxicating way. History is inspiration — inspiration to be more radical rather than sentimental.

The main historical strand this time around relates to the work of the Italian Futurists, whose first manifesto was written by F. T. Marinetti in 1909.

I just couldn’t wait for the 100th anniversary of Futurism! There’s an incredible richness that comes with the Futurists. Look at their manifestos. Look what they had to say about sound, about theater, about fashion, food, set design, poetry, the city — it goes on and on.

They thought art could influence every aspect of life.

Yes, and that gave us the template to completely open up Performa. All media, all the time — that’s always been my interest, because that’s how artists think. It’s the critics and the historians and the museums who create the categories. Artists are always looking around in a much broader way. That’s why I don’t use the words performance art per se, except for the purposes of creating a book, because historically, visual artists have always made live performance. The point was to open up the possibilities.

Are the Performa commissions part of that process?

That’s part of the quest: to produce new works that have impact and that will really stay with you, that will change you. We’ll have Candice Breitz working with a cast of identical twins in what is her first performance piece. Mike Kelley is making three new performance pieces in the Judson Memorial Church. And on the day of the New York City Marathon, Arto Lindsay will lead an arts parade of more than 100 performers through the streets of the city.

You constantly seem to be seeking out new places to stage these pieces. Is that because you’re looking for new audiences?

I care first of all about the experience of the viewer. There have to be performances on the level of all the other extraordinary art that we see. Where’s that level of performance? Why do so many people still think of performance as painful?

So it’s a kind of urban activism that we’re engaged in, and the opposite of site-specific art. We don’t find a place and then put an artist in there. We see the work and then try to find the perfect frame to bring out the colors, the sound, and the flavor of that particular piece. In a way, that’s the hardest part of our work — to find the space that seems absolutely right.