As a lively, performance-driven "festival as think tank," Performa's city-wide biennial— PERFORMA 09—will create a platform for envisioning the future of New York City as imagined by 100 international artists of the highest caliber. Adding a new dimension to the biennial's cross-disciplinary investigation of new ideas in the visual, performing, and literary arts, the PERFORMA 09 Architecture Program will further invigorate the contemplation of the future of New York City by opening up a dynamic conversation between the architecture and urban planning sectors and the contemporary arts community. Through a partnership with Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Van Alen Institute, and the Center for Architecture, the Architecture Program will examine and respond to New York's architectural challenges and opportunities, and other "intercultural" topics through charrettes, public symposia, installations, book and newsprint publications and performances, featuring the perspectives of over 100 architects, urban planners, and theorists.

RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, critic, curator, and author, whose seminal book Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, first published in 1979, pioneered the study of performance art. As founder and director of PERFORMA, the first biennial of new visual art performance in New York City, she produced PERFORMA 05 and PERFORMA 07, each of which included over 90 artists and presented a multidisciplinary program of live performance, film screenings, lectures and exhibitions. Author of Performance: Live Art Since 1960 and Laurie Anderson, she is a frequent contributor to Artforum, among other magazines. Goldberg has lectured extensively at the Architectural Association in London, California Institute of the Arts, Yale University, Princeton University, and the Tate Modern, and has taught at New York University since 1987.

The journal An Architektur was founded at the beginning of 2002 continuing the work of the architecture collective freies fach—a group that had sought, since the mid-1990s, to assess critically the restrictive reconstruction of Berlin and the relevant political and economical conditions through actions, exhibitions, and small publications. An Architektur is published biannually. Each issue contains research material, maps, and interviews, supplemented by writing from our editorial team, as well as contributions from outside authors. There is now growing cooperation with other groups, academic faculties, and research projects.

Markus Miessen is a London- and Berlin-based architect, researcher, educator, and writer. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a platform for spatial strategy and critical cultural analysis. As an architect, Miessen is a partner in the architectural office Miessen & Ploughfields. Their site-specific architecture The Violence of Participation was on show at the Lyon Biennial, 2007. The office is currently working on a series of international projects, including a high-alpine library and cultural centre, which will house the entire private archive and collection of the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

In addition to the Performa Commissions, additional programming and projects were devised by Performa curators Defne Ayas, Mark Beasley, Tairone Bastien, Lana Wilson, and Esa Nickle.

Founded in 2004, Performa is a multidisciplinary non-profit arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Performa's objectives are to: 1) commission new performance projects in the visual arts; 2) present a dedicated performance biennial in November; 3) consult and collaborate with arts organizations and performing arts presenters in New York City and around the world to create dynamic and historically significant performance programs; and 4) offer an ongoing educational platform for expanding the knowledge and understanding of live performance in the visual arts and cultural history. Since 2005, Performa has presented three festivals to critical acclaim that take place throughout New York City over a three-week period in November, reaching over 70,000 people.