The Cat and the Coup

by Kurosh ValaNejad and Peter Brinson

with Mark Garbett, Gabriela Purri R. Gomes,  Atwood Deng, Drew Perlman, Hyunjung Rhee, Aaron Cheney, Georg Luif, Christopher Morales Torres, Jeff Leonard, Roxana Eslamieh

In The Cat and the Coup, you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall. As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life by knocking objects off shelves, scattering his papers, and scratching him.

The game, situated within the traditions of Persian miniature art form and cold war foreign policy, asks players to consider their connection to Iranian history. The Cat and the Coup is both about the relationship between the Western video game player and Mossadegh and, by extension, the United States and Iran. It lays a foundation for today’s critical question – how do the people know when their democracy is threatened?