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During 2015, creative and campaigner Gustav Metzger launched one of his final major projects. Known for pioneering auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to plant-based living. Through a short video message, he issued a call for a worldwide initiative to remember nature.

“I call upon you for your participation in this global appeal for a day of action to commemorate our planet on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, encouraging makers and thinkers to oppose the continuing disappearance of flora and fauna. “The mission is to remind people of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so art will enter domains that are inherently creative.”

The Inception of Remember Nature

In this way Remember Nature was born, a day when cultural practitioners throughout Britain developed works to the escalating planetary emergency. One of the curators, who supported Metzger in his final years, notes his drive for action. “He had a great sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “My advice was – we must act now. We shouldn’t hold back for funding or for anyone to authorize this. Take action immediately.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the initiative did not sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but supporters think its influence can still be felt in movements like artist-led declarations and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how artists approach the eco-friendliness of their practices. For this purpose she is restaging it to commemorate its ten-year mark. Among the 18 lead artists participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and prominent artists. Each has produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be revealed on the fourth of November next year.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with the artist, she is on site in the countryside, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a coiled garden. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and half educational workshop. As she explains, the design and cultivation sessions have already involved learning about measurements (measuring out the planting intervals), science (studying the apple’s DNA), and history (mapping the stories of how various cultivars arrived in Britain).

Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces scarcolored sap

“Several the apples were picked because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill,” says Gallaccio. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ crimson liquid. Each has histories attached. The historical cultivar was brought over by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and hit the physicist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more consciously engaged of the environment and the influence we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, next time they were out, to read the label and see the variety and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

Within the city, a participant’s Book of Loss will include attendees exploring a major gallery on a journey to find the frozen formations that have been disappeared in the past decade. All formations will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using invisible ink. Whenever one is found, a bell will ring and a recitation will be held to honor that particular glacier.

At the same time, up in Barrow-in-Furness, Maddi Nicholson will be putting on a public show about our disconnection from the land, as well as holding a shared meal, made using sustainable ingredients. Over in Newcastle, a participant is streaming her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers embark on a mission to sing plants back to health in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Children’s Voices

Following this approach, a featured creator will be engaging schoolchildren – on the scheduled date she is aiming to cover an art space in kids’ letters and drawings that express their aspirations and concerns for the future. “Children’s words and images are compelling because they’re not as trammelled as mature perspectives,” she says in her public appeal. “The contributions of youth to the world is something quite unique and it may inspire a awareness of obligation from us all. Children are innocent. They have anxieties about what’s next. But this shouldn’t be about worry – it should be about hope and making sure that they see a better world.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Another artist’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves illustrating avians and then performing as birds – and for Remember Nature day he is aiming to represent Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a guided walk of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his ongoing series over the past twenty years. That ongoing series started after he experienced several events of discrimination on a one occasion. To counter this, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the location of every incident and record it – the project has since spiralled to cover events reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the pansy not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a slur – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a negative trait,” he says.

The project on the event day is to plant pansies at additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has honored before, all the while talking to those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his personal experiences. “We’ve seen quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Moving Forward with Hope

He desires his work – and