Biennale College – Blend 2025-26: the winning project of the pilot edition

The 3 Bitcoin Opera by Claudix Vanesix and Cristina Soto Arias (Peru/France) is the winning project of the pilot edition of Biennale College – Blend, a Biennale di Venezia programme that involves all its Departments and their Artistic Directors, and adressed to artists who intend to create works that do not belong to one predefined discipline.

Today, Sunday, September 6, 2026, The 3 Bitcoin Opera was awarded the €20,000 prize for Best Project during the award ceremony at the presence of Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, President of La Biennale di Venezia and Alberto Barbera, Director Cinema Department at the Spazio Incontri Immersivo, on the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio).

The 3 Bitcoin Opera reinterprets Brecht’s Threepenny Opera through a contemporary world shaped by algorithmic power, surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, war economies, and ecological collapse. At the core of the piece is the love story between Xenon9, a transfeminine cyborg trapped within the technological and financial systems of a futuristic city, and Felicidad, a transmasculine non-human being from the mountains, carrying an ancestral memory of the living world. Their relationship opens up the possibility of another form of connection and another possible future, while confronting a central paradox: can love survive outside the violent systems that made it possible?

Biennale College – Blend supports the development of 6 international projects presented by 6 artists, accompanied by 6 members of their production team (12 participants in all).

The other five teams in the pilot edition of Biennale College – Blend (2025 – 2026), formed by a director and a producer, are:

I was looking at the bodies and then I saw myself
Simone Marino (Italy) and Giacomo Rinaldini (Italy)

My Body Is a Resonance Chamber
Mei Liu (China), Chiaki Soma (Japan) and Jia Y Ding (China)

Sephirot® The Hypatia Equation
Carla Andolina (Italy) and Enea Lorenzoni (Italy) 

The Agharta City
Hongbo Cai (China) and Yinx Zhou (China)

Youth
Daria Zhuravel (Ukraine) and Anastasiia Zakhiiko (Ukraine)

The call for applications for the second edition of Biennale College – Blend is open until October 19, 2026. The six selected projects will be announced in January 2027 and will participate in a workshop in Venice, on the island of San Servolo, from February 22 to 28, 2027, followed by an online workshop from April 12 to 15, 2027.

Biennale College – Blend is made possible by the support of the Ministry of Culture –Directorate General Cinema and Audiovisual.