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In 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger launched one of his last significant endeavors. Known for pioneering auto-destructive art, Metzger had devoted his career to addressing societal issues from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. Via a concise video message, he requested support for a international event to remember nature.

“This is my appeal for your participation in this global appeal for a day of action to remember nature on 4 November 2015,” he announced, urging cultural workers to resist the steady eradication of living beings. “Our task is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

Thus the environmental art day was established, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the ongoing environmental crisis. An organizer, who cared for Metzger in his later life, recalls his drive for action. “He had a strong sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I just said – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for funding or for anyone to approve this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

After ten years, the initiative may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but organizers feel its impact can still be seen in campaigns like cultural advocacy groups and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the eco-friendliness of their practices. That’s why she is reviving it to mark its ten-year mark. Among the featured creators participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and prominent artists. All participants have created visual art, recorded calls to action, and created artworks set to be revealed on the fourth of November next year.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with one participant, she is working outdoors in Kent, helping plant apple trees that will develop into a circular grove. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and somewhat instructive. She describes, the design and cultivation sessions have already incorporated learning about maths (measuring out the gaps in the orchard), genetics (exploring the apple’s DNA), and geography (tracing the stories of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ scarlet-colored sap. Each has stories behind them. The decio apple was imported by the Romans. The Flower of Kent is the apple that fell from a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more actively aware of the natural world and the power we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was prompting them, next time they were out, to read the label and see what they’re called and where they were grown. Hopefully it says Kent!”

Cultural Projects Across the Country

Within the city, one artist’s work about extinction will involve participants looking through a major gallery on a journey to find the seven major glaciers that have been disappeared in the past decade. All formations will be illustrated on the gallery’s windows and walls using invisible ink. Each discovery, a alert will occur and a performance will be held to commemorate that specific ice mass.

Meanwhile, up in another location, a creative will be putting on a public show about our separation from nature, as well as holding a shared meal, prepared with organic, local produce. In another city, an artist is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers embark on a mission to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Young Insights

Following this approach, a featured creator will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is aiming to cover Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in children’s artwork that document their hopes and fears for the years ahead. “Children’s words and images are impactful because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “Young people’s input to the world is something distinctive and hopefully it will provoke a sense of responsibility from everyone. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about worry – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they get a future.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also appeals to children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves sketching winged creatures and then embodying them – and for the initiative he is aiming to represent an iconic figure. He is also conducting a itinerant journey of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his ongoing series over the recent decades. The project started after he endured three incidents of homophobic abuse on a one occasion. In response, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the site of each occurrence and photograph it – the project has since spiralled to cover events reported by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they don’t often last,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a very temporary memorial.”

He picked the flower not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The plan on the event day is to place blooms at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has marked earlier, 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 mournfully.

Advancing Positively

He desires his work – and