2002 is a "concert film" that collects together footage of approximately forty bands videotaped by artist C. Spencer Yeh during the year 2002, including Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Sightings, Sudden Infant, Cock ESP, Double Leopards, Caroliner Rainbow, Comets on Fire, and more. Acting as a survey, tribute, and foreshadowing of the contemporary American musical underground, 2002 captures not only the artists, but the audiences, spaces, and networks that remain incredibly formative and influential over a decade later.

A handful of the segments were originally posted to Yeh’s personal website, before the coming of YouTube and other media-sharing outlets. The average duration of the edits were kept short due to the storage and bandwidth considerations of that time – a strategy carried over in revisiting the footage years later. In a style similar to Yeh's Hair Police: 01-02, the accustomed musical documentary talking heads, voiceover meditations, and evocative b-roll were eschewed in favor of a more observational "vérité" approach. A loose narrative was already found in the sequencing of these short glimpses during the span of a year – audience members one moment are then found to be the artists on stage in the next. Some venues iconic in their moment are now long gone, while others were revived in recent times, activating a new history.