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During 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger launched one of his ultimate major projects. Famed for pioneering art that erases itself, Metzger had spent a lifetime to addressing global challenges from nuclear disarmament to ethical eating. In a brief video message, he issued a call for a international event to remember nature.

“This is my appeal for your involvement in this international summons for a day of action to commemorate our planet on 4 November 2015,” he stated, urging makers and thinkers to resist the continuing disappearance of living beings. “Our responsibility is to help the public recall of the abundance and sophistication in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore territories that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Inception of Nature Remembrance

Thus Remember Nature came into being, a day when creatives nationwide created responses to the escalating planetary emergency. An organizer, who cared for Metzger in his last days, notes his sense of urgency. “He had a great sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “I urged him – we must act now. No need to pause for funding or for anyone to green light this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

A decade on, the initiative may not have sparked the widespread change across the arts that Metzger had dreamed of, but organizers feel its legacy can still be felt in initiatives like cultural advocacy groups and environmental protests, as well as in how creatives consider the environmental impact of their practices. For this purpose she is restaging it to celebrate its ten-year mark. Part of the featured creators taking part currently are Yu-Chen Wang and Anya Gallaccio. Each has created visual art, made video appeals, and produced installations set to be unveiled on 4 November 2025.

Planting Hope

When speaking to the artist, she is out in a field in a rural area, helping plant apple trees that will create a circular grove. Engaging schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and part learning experience. As she explains, the planning and planting sessions have already involved learning about mathematics (calculating the gaps in the orchard), genetics (exploring the genetic makeup), and origins (researching the backgrounds of how distinct varieties arrived in Britain).

A lot of the apples were picked because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces red juice

“Many of the apples were selected because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Duck’s Bill,” she explains. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ scarlet-colored sap. They all have histories attached. The ancient variety was brought over by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that fell from a tree and struck the scientist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more actively aware of the natural world 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 their names and their origin. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Creative Initiatives Throughout Britain

In London, Youngsook Choi’s project on disappearance will involve participants searching a major gallery on a quest to find the frozen formations that have been vanished in modern times. Each glacier will be depicted on the gallery’s windows and walls using special pens. When located, a bell will ring and a performance will be conducted to remember that particular glacier.

Elsewhere, up in a northern town, an artist will be putting on a free exhibition about our alienation from the environment, as well as hosting a communal feast, made using organic, local produce. Over in Newcastle, an artist is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which regional performers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in Newcastle’s Jesmond Dene.

Young Insights

Following this approach, Cornelia Parker will be working with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is aiming to cover an art space in kids’ letters and drawings that express their hopes and fears for the future. “Children’s words and images are impactful 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 distinctive and hopefully it will inspire a sense of responsibility from each person. Kids are unbiased. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about anxiety – it should be about hope and making sure that they have a tomorrow.”

Remembrance and Reflection

A participant’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves sketching winged creatures and then performing as birds – and for Remember Nature day he is intending to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, visiting various sites that have been part of his Pansy Project over the recent decades. That ongoing series started after he faced three incidents of homophobic abuse on a single day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the spot where it happened and document it – the project has since expanded to incorporate experiences shared by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Apparently wildlife enjoys them, so they’re a short-lived memorial.”

Harfleet chose the pansy not just for the direct association – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its etymology comes from the French verb, penser, to think. “It was linked to a man who is contemplative, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The project on Remember Nature day is to place blooms at additional sites and also renew the tributes in places he has marked earlier, all the while conversing with those on the itinerant journey about the incidents and his recollections. “We’ve seen quite a few after my previous work,” he says sadly.

Progressing Optimistically

He desires his work – and