EMI KUSANO - Techno-Animism: Children's Guardian - Kamikakushi Summer 96

Technique: Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper
Paper size: 50 x 40cm
Image size: 48 x 27 cm
Edition: 5 + 1 AP
Year: 2023

In Techno-Animism: Children's Guardian – Kamikakushi Summer 96, Emi Kusano creates a paradoxical tableau: an innocent-seeming summer scene that simultaneously intertwines future and past, technology and nature, childhood and myth. A girl in a traditional uniform sits before a lush green landscape, her gaze serious, almost defiant. Beside her sits a robotic dog – familiar as a pet, yet alien as a prototype from the future. Behind her rises a tall, moss-covered figure, half machine, half forest creature, whose white head with empty eyes resembles a mask.

Kusano draws on the Japanese concept of animism, which assumes the presence of living things and nature spirits. Yet in her vision, it's not only trees and rivers that carry a spirit, but also machines, robots, and even digital artifacts. The title "Kamikakushi"—literally "abducted by spirits"—evokes echoes of Shinto, Miyazaki, and the secret spaces of childhood where fantasy and reality become indistinguishable. "96" marks the timeline of nostalgia: the era of the first game consoles, anime series, and early digital dreams.

The work is not a mere illustration, but a dazzling reflection on memory and the future. It asks: Who watches over children in a world where machines carry souls and nature has long been technologically transformed? Kusano answers with a figure that is both protector and alien – a techno-spiritual guardian who provides comfort yet irritates. Thus, the image becomes an allegory of a generation that grew up between analog childhood and digital utopia – and now looks into the mirror of its own techno-animistic fantasy.