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In 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger embarked on one of his final significant endeavors. Known for creating self-destructive creations, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing global challenges from nuclear disarmament to plant-based living. Through a short video message, he requested support for a international event to celebrate the natural world.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this global appeal for a day of action to commemorate our planet on the fourth of November, 2015,” he stated, inviting artists and creatives to resist the steady eradication of species. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter territories that are naturally imaginative.”

The Birth of Remember Nature

In this way Remember Nature was established, a day when artists across the country developed works to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who supported Metzger in his later life, notes his sense of urgency. “There was a strong sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I just said – we must act now. Let’s not wait for funding or for anyone to authorize this. Take action immediately.”

After Ten Years

After ten years, Remember Nature may not have sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but supporters think its influence can still be observed in campaigns like Culture Declares and environmental protests, as well as in how makers handle the environmental impact of their methods. This is the reason she is restaging it to celebrate its ten-year mark. Part of the 18 lead artists participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and other notable figures. Each has designed posters, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on the fourth of November next year.

Sowing Change

In conversation with the artist, she is on site in Kent, assisting with planting apple trees that will create a spiral-shaped orchard. Working with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and part learning experience. According to her, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (measuring out the distances between trees), genetics (exploring the hereditary traits), and geography (tracing the stories of how different apples arrived in Britain).

Several the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ scarcolored sap

“Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases red juice. Each has stories behind them. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that fell from a tree and hit Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more actively aware of the natural world and the control we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was prompting them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see the variety and where they were grown. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

Within the city, a participant’s Book of Loss will engage visitors exploring an art institution on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in the past decade. Every ice sheet will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using invisible ink. Each discovery, a chime will sound and a performance will be performed to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Meanwhile, up in another location, a creative will be hosting a open display about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a community dinner, made using regional food. Further north, a participant is streaming her environmental performance, in which local singers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a local park.

Young Insights

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to fill a cultural venue in youth creations that express their hopes and fears for the future. “Children’s words and images are impactful because they’re not as restricted as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and it may inspire a feeling of duty from us all. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about worry – it should be about positivity and making sure that they see a better world.”

Tributes and Thoughts

Another artist’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his Birds Can Fly involves drawing birds and then embodying them – and for the initiative he is intending to tackle a local symbol. He is also staging a walking tour of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the recent decades. That ongoing series started after he endured multiple occurrences of homophobic abuse on a single day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the location of every incident and photograph it – the project has since grown to incorporate experiences reported by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “It seems wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

He picked the pansy not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a derogatory label – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also renew the tributes in places he has honored before, all the while conversing with those on the guided walk about the incidents and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few following earlier installations,” he says with regret.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and