The spirit of Gustav Metzger drives through Glasgow during COP-26

During the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), a VW Passat with a one-metre-square glass container attached to its roof drove around the west end of Glasgow. The car was originally manufactured by climate change activist and artist Gustav Metzger in 1970, which he modified to trap its own emissions in the box above. The Common Guild, in collaboration with the Gustav Metzger Foundation, exhibitied the vehicle during COP26. They had several drivers who took the car around Glasgow daily and, after seven days, the glass vessel steamed up and the plants contained inside died from the toxic emissions. Entitled Mobbile, this installation makes for a moving statement on the release of CO2 and methane into the world and atmosphere above.

*Mobbile by Gustav Metzger, 1970/2021 © Alan Dimmick, courtesy of the Gustav Metzger Foundation*

It seems fitting that the car appeared in Glasgow, the city where Adam Smith, the ‘Father of Capitalism’ studied and later where the industrial revolution took off. Mobbile received a mixed reaction in the city – mainly confusion, but also intrigue and in some cases anger. It even underwent police checks multiple times. Speaking on her experience of driving through Byres Road and along the Clydebank at a panel discussion hosted by The Common Guild on 3 November, Kate V Robertson of the Sculptor Placement Group recalled a moment when she was filling up the tank at a petrol station and an employee commended her and the project for their activism in environmental causes. She also spoke of a debate she had with a NatWest banker, who argued for investment into sustainable modes of capitalism rather than reducing consumption.

Metzger arrived in Britain as a 13-year-old Jewish German refugee on the Kindertransport in 1939, where he lived a largely non-religiously life. Now in 2021, at a time when locals are forced to flee their homes from uninhabitable climates, an environmental state that Metzger fought hard to avoid, it’s a sad parallel that questions whether Metzger was able to leave his refugee identity in the past.

*Mobbile by Gustav Metzger, 1970/2005 © Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria, courtesy of the Gustav Metzger Foundation*

Throughout his career, the German artist used technology to create auto-destructive artwork. He wanted to recreate our obsession with destruction, which he described in his Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto (1959) as "the pummeling to which individuals and masses are subjected”. It was a reaction to post-war consumer capitalism and over-consumption, and later a response to the complicity of artists who used non-biodegradable materials. His involvement in destroying his own art places Metzger firmly within the growing performance art movement of the 1970s, along with his contemporaries Nam June Paik and Marina Abramović.

This 2021 installation isn’t the first time a gallery has paid homage to the trailblazer and his car. A more recent resurgence of interest in Metzger’s art has seen two thought-provoking projects emerge in Sweden. The Lunds Konsthall Gallery revealed an exhibition in 2006, Karba, in which four cars surround a plastic cube – the exhaust pipes attached to the box. After three months the transparent box had been blackened by soot. Karba became a blueprint for 2007's Project Stockholm, June (Phase 1) by the Sharjah Art Foundation, where the number of cars in the installation increased to 120, all connected to a polythene cube.

*Remember Nature by Gustav Metzger © London Fieldworks*

Fighting for the planet is something that Metzger cared hugely about right up to his death. In 2015, two years before he passed away, he scribbled 'Remeber Nature' on a piece of paper and spearheaded a project of the same name, inviting artists to spend a day rallying against climate change. COP26 certainly amplifies Metzger’s final demand.

By Betsy Cohen

Mobbile took place at various locations around Glasgow, 28 October–3 November. thecommonguild.org.uk

Becoming Gustav Metzger: Uncovering the Early Years, 1945-59 is available to view online courtesy of the Ben Uri Gallery. benuri.org