A Biennial Showcase Of South Florida Contemporary Media Art. Premiere & New Media Block Party, April 17, 2025, 6–10pm.
- wgclients01
- Apr 14
- 4 min read
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is pleased to present INTERTIDAL 2025, a biennial exhibition celebrating South Florida’s contributions to contemporary media art. INTERTIDAL will be on display in PAMM’s auditorium and online via PAMMTV, the museum’s streaming service for video art, from April 17, 2025, through April 27, 2026. Anyone worldwide can access the exhibition by visiting www.pamm.tv and creating an account. The premiere will be held on PAMM’s bayfront terrace with a Floating Film and new media block party featuring activations by more than 10 local media art organizations on Thursday, April 17 from 6–10pm.
Jacolby Satterwhite, En Plein Air: Diamond Princess, 2015. Ultra high definition color video and 3D animation, with sound, 9 min, 19 sec. © Jacolby Satterwhite. Courtesy of the Artist.
INTERTIDAL 2025 presents five landmark video works by Yucef Merhi, Jacolby Satterwhite, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, domingo castillo flores, and LIZN’BOW that expand the boundaries of media art through the lens of Miami. Through innovative video, digital, and multimedia performance techniques, each work harnesses collective imagination as a powerful tool for transforming identity. Together, they reimagine loss, language, and selfhood in Miami’s intertidal space—where cultures merge, histories shift, and the digital and physical coalesce. Intertidal is an invitation to experience South Florida’s transformation through the limitless possibilities of contemporary media art.
The 2025 INTERTIDAL begins with Yucef Merhi’s SORRY (2015), a computer-generated video documenting the birth and death of the work’s title to explore the relationship between electronic and natural language and the emotional transformation that converts language into experience. Over the course of the video, a vast number of individual cells transform into linear structures and eventually into the word “sorry,” before melting back into their cellular form, repeating the cycle. A leading voice in Latin American Digital Art, Merhi is renowned for his exploration of language, technology, and history, including his Maximum Security (1998–2004) installations in which the artist hacked into the emails of Hugo Chávez and displayed them across monumental wallpaper installations.
In Jacolby Satterwhite’s En Plein Air: Diamond Princess (2015), co-commissioned by PAMM, 3D-scanned performances by Miami hip-hop icon Trina and the artist meld with icons from Satterwhite’s Southern upbringing and virtual renderings of his late mother’s imagined inventions for QVC infomercials. The result is a surreal and ornate computer-generated world that celebrates Black queerness and freedom from oppression. By fusing analog and digital art techniques, the collective mythology of En Plein Air advances the medium of digital animation while dissolving the boundary between memory and desire.
INTERTIDAL continues with T (2019) by Keisha Rae Witherspoon, a journey into the transformation of identity in community. In this afro-futurist video work, a film crew follows three grieving participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, where folks assemble to model rest-in-peace T-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead. In celebrating Black grief and transcendence, Witherspoon reflects on what it means to be Black in current-day Miami, the forms in which grief takes shape, and the weight of social and self-preservation. T premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2020; screened at AFI Fest and MoMA’s New Directors New Films; and won the Golden Bear for best short film at the Berlinale.
Sourcing footage from South Florida luxury real estate promotions, domingo castillo flores’ Surface Image: Epilogue: (Version) examines how computer-generated imagery shapes the region’s perception and future. Glossy 3D renderings that simulate Miami’s cityscape meld media myths and real estate marketing, with most of the buildings featured completing construction before 2025. Contrasted by dissonant audio, this surreal montage of architectural animations asks viewers to consider who is foregrounded, who has been removed, and for whose future these environments are designed.
INTERTIDAL concludes with LIZN’BOW’s Niñalandia Skycoaster (2024), a single-channel video of a virtual reality experience that invites viewers on a lively rollercoaster through a post-apocalyptic Miami. From the perspective of a roller-coaster cart, audiences fly past pastelitos de guayaba, unicorn cows on jetskis, mountains of burning money, and monumental milk jugs engulfed in water against a buoyant backdrop of neon rainbows. Deploying nostalgic, early-internet aesthetics to blend Latin pop culture with queer-coded imagery, Niñalandia Skycoaster uses contemporary technologies to model inclusive regional futures.
INTERTIDAL 2025 is organized by Lauren Monzón, program manager digital engagement. PAMM’s digital engagement projects are produced under the guidance of Jay Mollica, senior director of digital engagement. Special thanks to Nathalia Bolivar, Daniela Vergaray, Michaela Blanc, Patrick Fox, Edlando Eliacin, Mariana Dias, Mehïka Dorval, Aída Cantú Artigas, and Zach Rubin-Rattet for support with production, scholarship, closed captioning, and translations.
PAMM’s project galleries and digital initiatives are funded in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
INTERTIDAL 2025 PREMIERE AND NEW MEDIA BLOCK PARTY
Thursday, April 17 | 6–10pm | RSVP here
Join PAMM in celebrating the premiere of PAMMTV’s INTERTIDAL 2025 on the museum’s bayfront terrace with a new media block party and Floating Film on Thursday, April 17 from 6–10pm.
Experience South Florida’s vibrant media art scene with works by Yucef Merhi, Jacolby Satterwhite, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, domingo castillo flores, and LIZN’BOW. Enjoy live music by DJ Pressure Point and Niña, activations by more than 10 local media art organizations, AI-powered figure drawing with Raw Figs, and aquatic screenings on Ballyhoo Media’s 50-ft floating screen.
This event brings together leading media arts organizations across South Florida under one roof. Look forward to activations by Club Sinema, Interactive Initiative, FilmGate, FIU Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator, Locust Projects, Miami Film Festival, Raw Figs, Third Horizon, and more. RSVP here.