Grizzly Bear - Ready, Able

What this video is

Released in November 2009 alongside Grizzly Bear's critically acclaimed third album Veckatimest (Warp Records), 'Ready, Able' arrived at the apex of the Brooklyn indie art-rock moment, when bands like Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, and Dirty Projectors were repositioning indie rock as a serious art form with gallery-world ambitions. Schulnik's video crystallized a broader 2000s trend of commissioning fine artists…

Why it matters

A landmark example of the fine-art music video as a genre unto itself, 'Ready, Able' demonstrated that stop-motion animation rooted in gallery-art practice could function as a critically dominant promotional format. It established Schulnik as a crossover figure between visual art and music video,…

The director

Allison Schulnik (born 1978, San Diego, CA) is an American painter, sculptor, and animated filmmaker. She earned her BFA in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts in 2000, training under legendary animator Jules Engel. Known for heavily…