A woman going through her shoe closet, seeing just how many shoes she has, what to do? — a pretty ’90s Sex and the City scene. But then the woman starts depositing these shoes all across town, at a bus stop, in front of buildings, to the surprise of locals standing or sitting nearby.

That was the theme and visual of one of the three videos chosen to be part of MoCA‘s permanent collection last Friday night, at Optic Nerve. It was the first time the museum picked more than one work, confirming in a sense the growth of the genre itself in the last decade in Miami.

Autumn Casey’s aptly named “Getting Rid of All My Shoes” also kicked off the evening, which included an overflowing audience for both the 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. screenings — MoCA opened up an extra room to accommodate the extra crowds, and added another showing on Saturday. In other words, Optic has become a pretty popular optical option for summer.

“Shoes,” at a little over four minutes long, competed with less literal works, one as short as 57 seconds. There was animation and found footage, works with spoken narratives and written text, as well as those devoid of any of that.

The second winner came from Justin Long, “In Search of the Miercoles,” a humorous afternoon at the beach, with the swimmer and his mask and snorkel wading around and searching the shallow blue waters, maybe for his miracle.

Susan Lee-Chun’s piece, the last chosen for the evening, was technically the best, a superbly choreographed and beautifully shot faux exercise video, “Let’s Suz-ercise! (Chicago Style).” (A solo show which included this video and also installation from the artist was up last year at her gallery, the David Castillo Gallery.)

A recent grad, Emerson Rosenthal,  won the audience choice award for “Pseudocoma,” a video collage inspired by Orwell.

Worthy of mention was David Rohn’s haunting work, “Construction one.” While described as a rumination on fantasy and dress-up time for adults, the resulting video turned melancholy, as the dress up incorporated a plastic bag over the face, and the accompanying sound tract was the whistling and plaintive singing of the old Black Plague children’s ditty, “Ring Around the Rosy.” Juan Carlos Zaldivar also delved into darker imagery, this time around the aural text based on the 19th century novel, Les Chants de Maldoror, later a Surrealist favorite.

With 22 offerings, many styles were represented, some better than others, some borderline silly, others more thoughtful. But that’s always the case with such a festival, really the biggest winner of the evening.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, 770 N.E. 125th St., North Miami; 305-893-6211; www.mocanomi.org.