Ancestral Performance Art

Forthcoming in June 2025

by Alissa Schwartz

How can we work effectively to dismantle racism and other social inequities if we do not first examine and rework our origin stories? A remembered and reimagined ancestry is integral to social transformation. 

The practice of ancestral performance art utilizes familial and ancestral history for the purpose of communal thriving and liberation. It is the examination of family stories told over and over again, as well as the surfacing of ones never recounted.  

Ancestral Performance Art describes the work of witnessing and holding space with a dying parent; uncovering and reinterpreting racist practices within a white Jewish family; and the twinning and untwinning and twinning again between a daughter and a mother. A workbook section offers a framework for the reader to practice their own ancestral performance art.

Ancestral Performance Art is an honest accounting for the many worlds and histories we are each a part of. It contributes to culture building and shift, in both personal and broader social settings. 

128pp / 5x6” / paperback
Impeller Press Books B-009
ISBN 9781967136995