The Cat and the Coup

This webpage was made for curator Dr. Linda Komaroff as part of the acquisition process at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)  

The following  8 items from the installation were acquired by the museum as a gift of the artists.

The Cat and the Coup, Where's Waldo edition, 2012, 
Archival Injet Prints

The Cat and the Coup is an eccentric historiography of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Iranian coup.

Click to enlarge image.

The Cat and the Coup, Where's Waldo edition, 2012, 
Archival Injet, Printer's Proofs

 1.   January 1962 - March 1967

Image size: ~27" x 40"; Paper size: 32.5" x 44"; Frame size: 34.5" x 46.5"

 2.  Auugust - November, 1953

Image size: ~54" x 40"; Paper size: 60" x 44"; Frame size: 62" x 46.5"

 3.  October 1951 - April 1953

Image size: 20.5" x 40"; Paper size: 28" x 44"; Frame size: 32" x 46.5"

 4.  March - May, 1951

Image size: 34" x 40"; Paper size: 42" x 44"; Frame size: 44" x 46.5"

 5.  March 1951 - March 1967

Image size: 60" x 18"; Paper size: 68" x 24"; Frame size: 70" x 27"

The full image is designed to fold like an accordion into a 5 page book.

 6.  the Cat

In the print edition of The Cat and the Coup, the Cat is represented by over-sized magnifying glass, covered in mink fur* and with an articulating tale.

* The fur was recycled from coat fragments purchased on eBay.

All prints are adhered to acid-free foam core, sit behind museum Plexiglas,
and are mounted in reinforced white frames (2" deep x 1.5" wide.)

These prints were created at Anderson Ranch Arts Center during a 3 month residency.

 7.  The Cat and the Coup, 2011

Interactive Non-fiction (a.k.a. Documentary Video Game)

Title Screen

 8.  Full walk-through by expert player; HD, 9 minutes

Abridged walk-through; 5 minutes

The interactive version of The Cat and the Coup comes installed on a 24" white iMac,
 generously donated by the USC School of Cinematic Arts' hardware recycling program.

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The project was started in 2007 with a seedling grant by The Advancing Scholarship for the Humanities and Social Sciences at USC. The Beta version of the game was released in 2011. In 2018, The Cat and the Coup was remastered in 4K and ported to the Sony PlayStation 4 console. It costs $2 to download.This new version is available for free on Steam and Itch.io Please visit our website for more information, including full credits, sources, reviews, essays, awards, and to download the game for free for PC and Mac.

Mini Lecture Tour

On Tuesday, October 8th, 2013 I traveled from the bright side of the Bay to the capital of Silicon Valley to present 3 talks and 3 Lightning Talks

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9:30–11am; Creative Responses to Catastrophe, 

California College of the Arts, Oakland

Course: Creative Responses to Catastrophe, Instructor: Anita AmirRezvani

45 min. presentation of my projects related to the course topic followed by Q & A from the 15 enrolled students.

Projects Presented:
1. Personal catastrophe, Bani Adam. 1989-2000
2. Sociopolitical catastrophe The Cat and the Coup, 2011, 2012

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3–4:30pm; on Collaboration, 

San Jose State University, Collge of Humanities and the Arts

Projects Presented:
1. The Night Journey, 2007 – Game Innovation Lab collaboration with media-artists at Bill Viola Studios.
2. The Cat and the Coup, 2011, 2012 – collaboration with videogame designer Peter Brinson.
3. The Body Scrub device, 2013 – created for Animation students interested in Interactive Installation

Sponsored by the Design department’s program in Animation/Illustration and the Game Development Club of the Digital Media Arts program in the department of Art and Art History. Special thanks to Game Development Club faculty adviser James Morgan for installing the Body Scrub device at SJSU in advance of my talk.
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7-8:30pm; Decoding The Cat and the Coup

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on the campus of San Jose State University

Decoding The Cat and the Coup; On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-backed military coup in Iran, which overthrew democratically-elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, I walk through the narrative architecture of The Cat and the Coup, print edition (2012.) My collaborator, USC Assistant Professor of Practice of Cinematic Arts Peter Brinson describes, via pre-recorded video, the allegorical mechanics of the video game (2011). After an introduction by program organizer and the Director of SJSU Persian Studies Dr. Persis Karim, SJSU History Professor Dr. George Vasquez provides context by describing world events and the political environment surrounding the 1953 coup d’état.

My mother and me, at the best library we have ever seen.

Sponsored by Persian Studies at SJSU; made possible by a grant from the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. Co-Sponsored by the SJSU Department of History, Middle East Studies and Global Studies

Dick Davis Tours the USC Interactive Media Bldg.

Dick Davis, widely regarded the finest living translator of Persian literature into English, stopped by the Game Innovation Lab to play The Cat and the Coup. Professor Davis is visiting USC as part of the 2013 Visions and Voices program to speak about: Epic, Romance, and Mysticism: The Greatness of Persian Poetry.

Professor Davis is pictured wearing an HMD developed at the MxR lab at ICT. He is experiencing iMaP student’s Nonny de la Pena’s Hunger in Los Angeles immersive journalism project. Special thanks to Alex McDowell’s  World Building team for allowing us to interrupt a work session.

During his visit, I realized the cover art for his translation of My Uncle Napoleon was illusrated by Ardeshir Mohasses, whose work inspired the art-direction for The Cat and the Coup.