CozyCalafia APT47, 2025, animation still, 6:10 minutes.
CozyCalafia APT47––sequel to PsyClone Calafia––reimagines Queen Calafia’s legendary griffins as digital warriors confronting colonial and authoritarian power. Queen Calafia is a fictional character from Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s 16th-century novel The Adventures of Esplendián, and after whom California was named.
The animation’s title references Cozy Bear, the Russian state-sponsored hacking group, while “47” alludes to the 47th presidency. The term APT—traditionally meaning Advanced Persistent Threat in cybersecurity—is redefined here as Advanced Persistent Resistance: a sustained force that challenges power, situating the animation within a landscape of political resistance and cyber warfare.
The CozyCalafia APT47 collective consists of hackers defending communities that have been historically and systemically marginalized. In this iteration, the griffins––once the mythical guardians of Queen Calafia's island––strike against colonial monarchs implicated in the conquest of the Americas, operating in a digital battlefield without borders, wielding zero-day exploits and counter-narratives to reclaim both digital and physical sovereignties.
