🔗 Share this article

In 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last important works. Recognized for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had dedicated his life to confronting global challenges from nuclear disarmament to plant-based living. Through a short video message, he requested support for a global day of action to honor the environment.

“This is my appeal for your engagement in this international summons for a day of action to reflect on the environment on 4 November 2015,” he announced, inviting cultural workers to stand against the continuing disappearance of species. “Our responsibility is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Nature Remembrance

In this way Remember Nature was established, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the escalating planetary emergency. An organizer, who worked closely with Metzger in his final years, recalls his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “I urged him – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for funding or for anyone to green light this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the initiative may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but organizers feel its impact can still be felt in initiatives like artist-led declarations and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the eco-friendliness of their practices. This is the reason she is restaging it to mark its ten-year mark. Included in the featured creators involved this time are Cornelia Parker and prominent artists. They have all created visual art, made video appeals, and developed pieces set to be unveiled on November 4, 2025.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with one participant, she is on site in the countryside, helping plant apple trees that will develop into a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is somewhat artistic and half educational workshop. According to her, the preparation and sowing sessions have already included learning about measurements (calculating the planting intervals), science (discussing the apple’s DNA), and geography (tracing the journeys of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

Several the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that releases red juice

“Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got funny names such as the other unusual varieties,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Each has histories attached. The decio apple was introduced by the Romans. The Kentish variety is the apple that descended from a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the natural world and the control we have over it. “To many of them, apples were just things you buy from a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, next time they were out, to read the label and see their names and where they were grown. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Cultural Projects Across the Country

In London, a participant’s project on disappearance will include attendees exploring an art institution on a mission to find the ice masses that have been vanished in the past decade. Each glacier will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using ultraviolet markers. Whenever one is found, a alert will occur and a recitation will be conducted to remember that particular glacier.

Elsewhere, up in Barrow-in-Furness, an artist will be hosting a public show about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a shared meal, cooked from organic, local produce. Further north, Uta Kögelsberger is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers embark on a mission to sing plants back to health in a green space.

Youth Perspectives

Similar to other artists, another participant will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is planning to fill an art space in youth creations that capture their hopes and fears for the future. “Youthful expressions are compelling because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can inspire a feeling of duty from each person. Children are innocent. They have fears about the future. But this shouldn’t be about anxiety – it should be about positivity and us ensuring that they see a better world.”

Tributes and Thoughts

A participant’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for Remember Nature day he is planning to tackle a local symbol. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his long-term work over the past twenty years. The project began when he endured multiple occurrences of discrimination on a particular day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the location of every incident and record it – the project has since spiralled to include incidents experienced by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently birds consume them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

He picked the pansy not just for the clear connection – 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 thoughtful, and that, of course, is a bad quality,” he says.

The intention on 4 November is to place blooms at additional sites and also renew the tributes in places he has honored before, all the while discussing with those on the itinerant journey about the occurrences and his personal experiences. “There’s been quite a few following earlier installations,” he says mournfully.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and