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During 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his ultimate important works. Famed for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had dedicated his life to confronting global challenges from peace activism to ethical eating. Via a concise video message, he issued a call for a global day of action to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your participation in this worldwide call for a day of action to remember nature on November 4th, 2015,” he stated, encouraging cultural workers to oppose the steady eradication of living beings. “The mission is to make audiences aware of the diversity and intricacy in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into domains that are inherently creative.”

The Creation of Environmental Reflection

In this way the Nature Remembrance initiative came into being, a day when creatives nationwide produced pieces to the ongoing environmental crisis. One of the curators, who worked closely with Metzger in his last days, remembers his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a strong sense of urgency for him at the close of his days,” she says. “My advice was – don’t delay. We shouldn’t hold back for sponsorship or for anyone to authorize this. We should proceed.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, the project did not incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but Joelson believes its influence can still be observed in movements like Culture Declares and climate activism networks, as well as in how artists approach the sustainability of their practices. This is the reason she is relaunching it to commemorate its ten-year mark. Among the key participants involved this time are Cornelia Parker and prominent artists. All participants have produced imagery, recorded calls to action, and produced installations set to be unveiled on the fourth of November next year.

Planting Hope

Interviewing Anya Gallaccio, she is out in a field in the countryside, cultivating apple trees that will develop into a circular grove. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and half educational workshop. According to her, the planning and planting sessions have already incorporated learning about maths (measuring out the planting intervals), science (exploring the apple’s DNA), and history (tracing the journeys of how various cultivars were introduced to England).

Several the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the Duck’s Bill. We have one apple that produces red juice

“A lot of the apples were selected because they’ve got funny names such as the Bloody Butcher,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Every one carries histories attached. The decio apple was brought over by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and struck the scientist’s head.”

The artist aimed the children to be more thoughtfully connected of the environment and the control we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you get at a supermarket, so I was urging them, on their next shopping trip, to read the label and see what they’re called and where they were grown. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Nationwide

In London, a participant’s work about extinction will involve participants looking through Tate Modern on a mission to find the ice masses that have been lost in the past decade. Each glacier will be illustrated on the museum surfaces using special pens. When located, a alert will occur and a reading will be held to remember that particular glacier.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, a creative will be presenting a public show about our separation from nature, as well as hosting a shared meal, prepared with sustainable ingredients. Further north, an artist is broadcasting her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers undertake a task to sing plants back to health in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, another participant will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to decorate Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in youth creations that document their hopes and fears for the years ahead. “Youthful expressions are compelling because they’re not as restricted as grown-ups’,” she says in her call to action video. “What children have to offer to the world is something quite unique and perhaps it can provoke a feeling of duty from everyone. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about anxiety – it should be about positivity and our responsibility that they see a better world.”

Remembrance and Reflection

Another artist’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his avian project involves sketching winged creatures and then performing as birds – and for the initiative he is aiming to address a local symbol. He is also organizing a itinerant journey of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his long-term work over the recent decades. That ongoing series started after he faced multiple occurrences of discrimination on a single day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to place a bloom at the spot where it happened and document it – the project has since spiralled to cover events reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Reportedly birds consume them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

The artist selected the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a slur – but also because its etymology comes 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 project on the event day is to place blooms at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has previously memorialised, all the while discussing with those on the guided walk about the events and his personal experiences. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says sadly.

Advancing Positively

He desires his work – and