Synopsis: INSTITUTIONS is a short animated film that envisions an imaginary community’s existence on a lonely array of ocean-going barges.  A series of short vignettes show the small-town institutions that a community requires: each barge bears a building with a different function.  One carries a county courthouse, with a monument to the Ten Commandments placed in front.  Another barge supports a detention center, surrounded by barbed wire.  Everything necessary for communal living is found, a grocery store, perversely placed adjacent to a gun shop vies for patronage.  The population, however, is unseen, but sensed, as though they have just ‘disappeared’.  This lack of ‘actors’ increases a sense of alienation and mystery – what exactly is happening here?  Why have people ended up on these barges?  Has there been a catastrophe?  Is this the future of our society? The animation culminates when the barge, bearing the convenience store and its neon signs and car alarms, is overcome by heavy seas.