Artist: 2girls1comp

Genre: Video Installation

When the H key is pressed, all men must dance. Dancing Plague is a mod for GTA V that forces every male NPC to dance feverishly to the music of Azu Tiwaline whenever the player holds the H key. This intervention spotlights the inherent gender biases within the game’s animation system, where dance moves are primarily designed for female performers, often objectified as sex workers. By redirecting these choreographies to male characters, the mod disrupts the rigid gender binaries coded into the game, creating a spectacle where masculinity is both liberated and challenged.

Artist Bio:

2girls1comp is a Zurich-based modding duo founded in 2023 by Marco De Mutiis [1983] and Alexandra Pfammatter [1993]. Their work changes the logic of video games as an act of creative counter-play, revealing the social and economic fabric in which they are immersed: from reclaiming global digital infrastructures to commenting on free labour within the capitalist ideologies of the gaming industry, to showcasing the way play can influence its subjects through its mechanics. Their projects are distributed within the gaming and modding community, as well as cultural and artistic contexts.