🔗 Share this article

During 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger embarked on one of his last significant endeavors. Famed for pioneering auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to responding to global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to plant-based living. In a brief video message, he requested support for a global day of action to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to commemorate our planet on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, encouraging cultural workers to resist the ongoing loss of flora and fauna. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so art will enter realms that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Creation of Remember Nature

In this way the environmental art day was born, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who cared for Metzger in his final years, notes his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a profound sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – don’t delay. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to approve this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

Ten years later, Remember Nature may not have triggered the broad uprising across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but supporters think its influence can still be observed in movements like artist-led declarations and environmental protests, as well as in how makers handle the sustainability of their practices. That’s why she is reviving it to celebrate its decade milestone. Included in the 18 lead artists taking part currently are Cornelia Parker and prominent artists. They have all created visual art, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be presented on the fourth of November next year.

Cultivating Awareness

Interviewing the artist, she is on site in a rural area, assisting with planting apple trees that will create a spiral-shaped orchard. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. She describes, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (measuring out the planting intervals), science (studying the hereditary traits), and geography (mapping the journeys of how distinct varieties were introduced to England).

A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Each has histories attached. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that dropped off a tree and landed on the scientist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more consciously engaged of nature and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see what they’re called and the source. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Across the Country

At the capital, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will include attendees looking through a major gallery on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been disappeared in modern times. All formations will be drawn on the exhibition spaces using special pens. When located, a alert will occur and a recitation will be conducted to remember that individual formation.

Meanwhile, up in another location, a creative will be putting on a public show about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a communal feast, prepared with organic, local produce. Over in Newcastle, an artist is sharing her musical project, in which community vocalists begin a project to perform for vegetation in a green space.

Youth Perspectives

Like Gallaccio, a featured creator will be engaging schoolchildren – on the actual event she is hoping to cover Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in youth creations that express their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Children’s words and images are compelling because they’re not as restricted as mature perspectives,” she says in her recorded message. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and hopefully it will stimulate a feeling of duty from us all. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about hope and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Another artist’s work also connects with children. With a background in performance, his avian project involves sketching winged creatures and then embodying them – and for Remember Nature day he is aiming to tackle a local symbol. He is also organizing a guided walk of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his Pansy Project over the past twenty years. That ongoing series started after he experienced multiple occurrences of discrimination on a one occasion. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the spot where it happened and record it – the project has since spiralled to include incidents experienced by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

He picked the flower not just for the clear connection – it has long been a slur – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The plan on the event day is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has honored before, all the while talking to those on the guided walk about the incidents and his recollections. “We’ve seen quite a few after my previous work,” he says with regret.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and