A System, Not an Incident
The film companion to Record No. 002 traces ten years of budgets and the reporting tables that gradually disappeared.
Video No. 002 – Scripted companion to ‘Institutions Under Strain’, forthcoming. The script and source list are preserved.
An incident can be filmed as it happens. A system appears only in sequence: ten years of documents, placed in order. This film assembles that sequence for the institution documented in Institutions Under Strain.
The shape of the film
The film has three movements, matching the Record’s three files: budgets, appointments and disappearing disclosures. Each presents the documents in date order and reads the relevant lines aloud, without commentary beyond the arithmetic. In sequence, the same table shows one column shrinking year after year.
What film adds to the record
The film places side by side the page where a reporting table appeared and the page where it disappeared. For this kind of institutional change, visual comparison carries evidence that prose cannot reproduce as directly.
The standing script
The script is published and every figure is cited. The film is never silently re-edited: when the record behind it grows, a dated addendum follows.
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- Public finance
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