Cultural Figures Fight Back In the Face of the Environmental Crisis: Sowing the Apple That Fell on Isaac Newton's Head

During 2015, visionary and advocate Gustav Metzger initiated one of his last significant endeavors. Famed for creating 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 requested support for a global day of action to honor the environment.

“I, Gustav Metzger, am asking for your engagement in this global appeal for a day of action to remember nature on November 4th, 2015,” he stated, inviting makers and thinkers to oppose the steady eradication of flora and fauna. “The mission is to help the public recall of the richness and complexity in nature … and by doing so the arts will venture into territories that are naturally imaginative.”

The Birth of Remember Nature

Thus Remember Nature was established, a day when artists across the country developed works to the escalating planetary emergency. Jo Joelson, who worked closely with Metzger in his later life, notes his drive for action. “There was a profound sense of urgency for him at the end of his life,” she says. “My advice was – don’t delay. No need to pause for sponsorship or for anyone to approve this. Let’s just do it.”

After Ten Years

After ten years, the initiative may not have incited the mass movement across the arts that Metzger had envisioned, but organizers feel its influence can still be felt in initiatives like Culture Declares and Extinction Rebellion, as well as in how creatives consider the sustainability of their methods. This is the reason she is restaging it to commemorate its decade milestone. Among the key participants participating now are Cornelia Parker and prominent artists. They have all created visual art, made video appeals, and developed pieces set to be revealed on the fourth of November next year.

Cultivating Awareness

In conversation with Anya Gallaccio, she is working outdoors in a rural area, helping plant apple trees that will grow to form a spiral-shaped orchard. Collaborating with schoolchildren, her project is half artwork and somewhat instructive. As she explains, the planning and planting sessions have already involved learning about mathematics (measuring out the distances between trees), science (discussing the apple’s DNA), and history (researching the stories of how distinct varieties came to the UK).

A lot of the apples were chosen because they’ve got humorous titles such as the other unusual varieties. We have one apple that releases scarcolored sap

“Many of the apples were chosen because they’ve got amusing labels such as the Duck’s Bill,” the artist notes. “We have one apple that ‘bleeds’ red juice. They all have histories attached. The decio apple was introduced by the Romans. The local breed is the apple that dropped off a tree and struck the physicist’s head.”

Gallaccio wanted the children to be more consciously engaged of the natural world and the power 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 check the packaging and see the variety and the source. Ideally it reads Kent!”

Artistic Responses Nationwide

Within the city, Youngsook Choi’s Book of Loss will include attendees searching an art institution on a mission to find the seven major glaciers that have been vanished in recent years. All formations will be drawn on the museum surfaces using ultraviolet markers. When located, a bell will ring and a performance will be held to honor that particular glacier.

Meanwhile, up in Barrow-in-Furness, a creative will be presenting a free exhibition about our separation from nature, as well as holding a shared meal, made using organic, local produce. Further north, a participant is sharing her musical project, in which community vocalists begin a project to perform for vegetation in a local park.

Youth Perspectives

Following this approach, another participant will be collaborating with schoolchildren – on the actual event she is hoping to fill Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in kids’ letters and drawings that capture their dreams and worries for the future. “Youthful expressions are compelling because they’re not as trammelled as adults’,” she says in her recorded message. “Young people’s input to the world is something quite unique and hopefully it will stimulate a sense of responsibility from us all. Youth is pure. They have anxieties about what’s next. But let’s not make it about fear – it should be about hope and us ensuring that they see a better world.”

Memorials and Memory

Another artist’s work also appeals to children. As a former drag queen, his feathered initiative involves drawing birds and then performing as birds – and for the initiative he is planning to tackle Liverpool’s famous Liver bird. He is also conducting a guided walk of the city, stopping at places that have been part of his Pansy Project over the last two decades. That ongoing series commenced following he experienced several events of prejudice on a particular day. As a reaction, Harfleet decided to plant a pansy at the site of each occurrence and document it – the project has since expanded to include incidents reported by other people across the world. “I place the plants there but they fade quickly,” says Harfleet. “Apparently pigeons like to eat them, so they’re a ephemeral memorial.”

Harfleet chose the bloom not just for the obvious reason – it has long been a derogatory label – 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 additional sites and also refresh the memorials in places he has marked earlier, all the while conversing with those on the itinerant journey about the occurrences and his memories of them. “I’ve recorded quite a few since I last planted,” he says with regret.

Advancing Positively

Harfleet hopes his work – and