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Back in 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last major projects. Known for creating auto-destructive art, Metzger had spent a lifetime to responding to global challenges from anti-nuclear advocacy to ethical eating. Via a concise video message, he issued a call for a worldwide initiative to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this international summons for a day of action to reflect on the environment on the fourth of November, 2015,” he announced, inviting artists and creatives to resist the continuing disappearance of species. “Our responsibility is to make audiences aware of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so creativity will explore realms that are fundamentally innovative.”

The Inception of Nature Remembrance

And so the environmental art day came into being, a day when artists across the country developed works to the ongoing environmental crisis. One of the curators, who cared for Metzger in his final years, remembers his feeling of immediacy. “I sensed a strong sense of urgency for him at the final chapter,” she says. “I just said – we must act now. Let’s not wait for funding or for anyone to approve this. Take action immediately.”

A Decade Later

After ten years, Remember Nature hasn’t quite incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had hoped for, but Joelson believes its influence can still be felt in campaigns like artist-led declarations and environmental protests, as well as in how makers handle the environmental impact of their practices. This is the reason she is restaging it to mark its ten-year mark. Part of the 18 lead artists participating now are Yu-Chen Wang and prominent artists. All participants have produced imagery, made video appeals, and created artworks set to be presented on November 4, 2025.

Planting Hope

Interviewing the artist, she is out in a field in Kent, assisting with planting apple trees that will create a circular grove. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is part creative piece and somewhat instructive. She describes, the planning and planting sessions have already involved learning about measurements (measuring out the planting intervals), science (studying the apple’s DNA), and history (researching the backgrounds of how different apples arrived in Britain).

Several the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the Bloody Butcher. We have one apple that produces scarcolored sap

“Many of the apples were picked because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill,” she explains. “We have one apple that releases scarlet-colored sap. Each has histories attached. The ancient variety was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that descended from a tree and landed on the scientist’s head.”

She hoped the children to be more actively aware of nature and the power we have over it. “For a lot of them, apples were just things you find in a supermarket, so I was encouraging them, when they go shopping, to look on the bag and see the variety and where they were grown. Perhaps it indicates Kent!”

Artistic Responses Nationwide

At the capital, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will involve participants searching an art institution on a quest to find the ice masses that have been vanished in recent years. Every ice sheet will be illustrated on the exhibition spaces using invisible ink. When located, a alert will occur and a performance will be conducted to remember that particular glacier.

Meanwhile, up in a northern town, an artist will be putting on a public show about our alienation from the environment, as well as holding a communal feast, cooked from regional food. In another city, Uta Kögelsberger is sharing her Some Kind of Love / Forest Choir, in which local singers undertake a task to use music to heal flora in a green space.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, another participant will be working with schoolchildren – on the day itself she is hoping to fill an art space in kids’ letters and drawings that document their hopes and fears for the future. “Children’s words and images are impactful because they’re not as inhibited as mature perspectives,” she says in her public appeal. “Young people’s input to the world is something truly special and perhaps it can inspire a sense of responsibility from each person. Youth is pure. They have fears about the future. But it isn’t meant to be about anxiety – it should be about optimism and us ensuring that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Paul Harfleet’s work also resonates for children. With a background in performance, his Birds Can Fly involves drawing birds and then embodying them – and for the event he is aiming to represent a local symbol. He is also staging a itinerant journey of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his ongoing series over the recent decades. The project started after he faced multiple occurrences of prejudice on a single day. In response, Harfleet decided to sow a flower at the site of each occurrence and record it – the project has since expanded to cover events reported by other people across the world. “The flowers remain there but they are temporary,” says Harfleet. “It seems pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

The artist selected the flower not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a term of homophobic abuse – but also because its origin is the French verb, penser, to think. “It became associated with a man who is reflective, and that, of course, is a terrible thing,” he says.

The project on 4 November is to sow flowers at fresh spots and also replant flowers in places he has marked earlier, all the while discussing with those on the guided walk about the occurrences and his recollections. “I’ve recorded quite a few following earlier installations,” he says sadly.

Moving Forward with Hope

Harfleet hopes his work – and