🔗 Share this article

Back in 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate major projects. Famed for pioneering self-destructive creations, Metzger had spent a lifetime to confronting societal issues from peace activism to plant-based living. In a brief video message, he made a plea for a worldwide initiative to celebrate the natural world.

“I call upon you for your engagement in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on the fourth of November, 2015,” he stated, encouraging cultural workers to stand against the continuing disappearance of flora and fauna. “The mission is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into realms that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Nature Remembrance

In this way Remember Nature was born, a day when creatives nationwide created responses to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who worked closely with Metzger in his last days, recalls his feeling of immediacy. “He had a profound sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – let’s not mess around. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to green light this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

A decade on, the initiative may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its impact can still be seen in campaigns like Culture Declares and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the sustainability of their practices. That’s why she is reviving it to mark its decade milestone. Included in the featured creators participating now are Cornelia Parker and Anya Gallaccio. Each has produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and developed pieces set to be revealed on the fourth of November next year.

Sowing Change

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in Kent, helping plant apple trees that will create a spiral-shaped orchard. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and part learning experience. She describes, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about mathematics (calculating the planting intervals), biology (studying the apple’s DNA), and geography (researching the journeys of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that produces scarcolored sap

“Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ scarlet-colored sap. Each has background narratives. The decio apple was imported by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and hit the physicist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more consciously engaged of the natural world and the influence we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see what they’re called and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Across the Country

In London, Youngsook Choi’s work about extinction will include attendees looking through an art institution on a mission to find the ice masses that have been disappeared in recent years. Each glacier will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using ultraviolet markers. When located, a alert will occur and a recitation will be conducted to remember that specific ice mass.

Elsewhere, up in another location, a creative will be putting on a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a communal feast, made using regional food. Further north, Uta Kögelsberger is broadcasting her environmental performance, in which community vocalists embark on a mission to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Young Insights

Like Gallaccio, another participant will be working with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is planning to decorate a cultural venue in kids’ letters and drawings that express their dreams and worries for the tomorrow. “Youthful expressions are powerful because they’re not as inhibited as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something truly special and it may provoke a awareness of obligation from us all. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about optimism and our responsibility that they have a tomorrow.”

Tributes and Thoughts

Another artist’s work also connects with children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves illustrating avians and then dressing up as them – and for the event he is aiming to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a walking tour of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the past twenty years. That ongoing series began when he experienced three incidents of discrimination on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since expanded to include incidents reported by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the clear connection – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is thoughtful, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The plan on 4 November is to sow flowers at additional sites and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while discussing with those on the guided walk about the incidents and his recollections. “We’ve seen quite a few following earlier installations,” he says sadly.

Moving Forward with Hope

The artist wishes his work – and