🔗 Share this article

During 2015, artist and activist Gustav Metzger initiated one of his final important works. Famed for introducing art that erases itself, Metzger had devoted his career to confronting global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to vegetarianism. Through a short video message, he requested support for a international event to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your involvement in this global appeal for a day of action to reflect on the environment on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, inviting makers and thinkers to stand against the ongoing loss of living beings. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are naturally imaginative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

In this way the Nature Remembrance initiative came into being, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the ongoing environmental crisis. Jo Joelson, who cared for Metzger in his final years, notes his sense of urgency. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I urged him – don’t delay. No need to pause for financial support or for anyone to approve this. We should proceed.”

Ten Years On

After ten years, the project hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but supporters think its influence can still be seen in initiatives like cultural advocacy groups and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the environmental impact of their methods. This is the reason she is reviving it to celebrate its decade milestone. Included in the 18 lead artists participating now are Cornelia Parker and Anya Gallaccio. Each has designed posters, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be presented on the fourth of November next year.

Sowing Change

Interviewing one participant, she is on site in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will develop into a coiled garden. Working with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. She describes, the preparation and sowing sessions have already incorporated learning about measurements (measuring out the distances between trees), science (discussing the hereditary traits), and origins (mapping the journeys of how different apples were introduced to England).

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

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Every one carries stories behind them. The historical cultivar was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that dropped off a tree and landed on Isaac Newton’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more consciously engaged of the natural world and the control we have over it. “In their experience, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, next time they were out, to look on the bag and see what they’re called and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

In London, one artist’s Book of Loss will involve participants exploring an art institution on a quest to find the ice masses that have been vanished in the past decade. All formations will be drawn on the exhibition spaces using special pens. Each discovery, a chime will sound and a recitation will be performed to commemorate that particular glacier.

At the same time, up in Barrow-in-Furness, a creative will be hosting a open display about our alienation from the environment, as well as organizing a communal feast, made using regional food. Further north, a participant is sharing her environmental performance, in which community vocalists begin a project to sing plants back to health in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Like Gallaccio, Cornelia Parker will be engaging schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to fill a cultural venue in kids’ letters and drawings that capture their dreams and worries for the future. “Kids’ art are compelling because they’re not as restricted as grown-ups’,” she says in her public appeal. “The contributions of youth to the world is something quite unique and perhaps it can provoke a feeling of duty from each person. Children are innocent. They have fears about the future. But this shouldn’t be about fear – it should be about optimism and us ensuring that they have a tomorrow.”

Remembrance and Reflection

A participant’s work also connects with children. Drawing on past experience, his Birds Can Fly involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for the initiative he is planning to address an iconic figure. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, exploring locations that have been part of his ongoing series over the past twenty years. That ongoing series started after he faced several events of prejudice on a single day. To counter this, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the location of every incident and record it – the project has since expanded to incorporate experiences reported by other people across the world. “I leave the pansies there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “It seems wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

The artist selected the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its name derives from the French verb, penser, to think. “People connected it with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The plan on the event day is to plant pansies at fresh spots and also refresh the memorials in places he has marked earlier, all the while conversing with those on the walking tour about the occurrences and his personal experiences. “I’ve recorded quite a few after my previous work,” he says mournfully.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and