The Survival 4.0

The Survival 4.0 is a square-format (50 × 50 cm) carborundum print from a numbered sequence in Mori's ongoing investigation of persistence and adaptation. The carborundum process — silicon carbide grit bonded to a metal or board plate, then inked intaglio-style and run through an etching press — produces granular black fields and irregular tonal gradients that read as weathered surfaces or geological strata, rather than the clean line-work of traditional moku-hanga. The "4.0" in the title references industrial-versioning vernacular (Industry 4.0), framing survival itself as something iterated and adapted to a post-industrial era. Compositionally, Mori's recent practice favors abstract, non-representational fields over figurative subjects, with edges and textures carrying the work that drawing might otherwise do. The print sits within the contemporary German printmaking tradition Mori absorbed at Bremen University of the Arts — a context that prizes tactile materiality and process-led abstraction over the meisho-e or kacho-e narrative frameworks of the older Japanese print canon. It was shown at the 68th CWAJ Print Show in Tokyo in 2025.