I am not enough of a rock

I am not enough of a rock
I am not enough of a rock (not to be vain or to want to be heard) 2024 Pablo Serret de Ena
Exploring a fusion of geology and durable / electronic waste to shape novel materials. Let's create desirable habitats based on this co-evolution.

Pablo Serret de Ena
Copenhagen, Denmark
About
A Spanish multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Copenhagen, exploring the intersection of technology and magical realism within society.
Links
Team members
Pablo Serret de Ena (assisted by Juan Alonso)
Field of work
Design, Ecology, Visual Art, Multimedia, Research
Project category
Material tracking and reuse
Project submitted
2024

I am a Spanish multidisciplinary artist, designer and explorer based in Copenhagen. Son of a social worker and a mathematician, now parent of two children. I hold a BFA from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Aalto University (formerly TAIK) in Helsinki. In most of my projects, there has always been a special focus engaging audiences around processes, as part of the work by completing it, co- creating or as players of a bigger game. A collaborative basis practice that proposes art as a flexible system in a permanent conversation with its environment and inhabitants.

For the past years, I've been specially concerned about how to include ecological narratives within a critical art practice and very interested in the strategies employed by science to build and organize knowledge. Concepts like measurement, observation or evidence may confront fiction or magical realism in order to create meaningful storytelling in the shape of films, workshops or speculative design. A scientific approach from a poetic perspective.

Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to present my work in over twenty five countries throughout exhibitions, workshops, lectures, screenings and residencies.

From the curiosity and the gratitude.


According to the time scale of geological events (deep time), we are leaving a permanent addition of strata that tell us how we will be remembered by the very deep future. This artificially modified ground acts as an evidence of human impact but also home for novel materials, resulting from the hybridization of geological pieces (rocks, minerals, corals…) and durable waste (plastics, electronics...). From fordites to plastiglomerates or technofossils…

"I am not enough of a rock (not to be vain or to want to be heard)" proposes a radical ecological approach to this blended matter, speculating with a new taxonomy of materials dreamt from the co-evolution of nature and machine. A new collection of “artifi-natural“ materiality still able to hold and transfer its original properties and capacities into its new ontology. Rocks that can store data as a hard disk, mycelium as wifi antennas or optical fibre able to independently evolve as corals do.

"I am not enough of a rock (not to be vain or to want to be heard)" proposes different lines of research and experimentation -through art and speculative design- in order to explore desirable habitats where this materiality can be shaped. Between the natural and the artificial. The esoteric and the queer.

This is an on going project combining critical research and speculative practice, currently looking for platforms to collaborate in the format of lectures, workshops and curating exhibitions / publications.