Grizzly Bear / Yet Again

by: Emily Kirkpatrick

Grizzly Bear’s music video for “Yet Again,” one of the singles from their new album Shields, traverses the surface of things both literally and figuratively as an attempt at analyzing the art of performance. The video is part of the debut of The Creators Project’s new YouTube channel, which will feature both the project’s new short films and behinds the scenes videos along with all of their past collaborations.

For those who have somehow managed to surf the internet without stumbling across it, The Creators Project is a revolutionary partnership between VICE and Intel that brings together artists in every discipline across the globe who use technology as a means to break down boundaries in their genre.

The Grizzly Bear music video was directed by Emily Kai Bock, known for her artsy, conceptual style, and perhaps, most famously, for bringing Grimes to a dirt bike rally in her video for “Oblivion.” Although this music video is more of a short film than Grizzly Bear’s previous works that makes perfect sense, according to the band, who told the Creators Project, “we never put any restrictions on a director when they do a video, it’s their art project set to our music.”

Bock’s film follows a figure skater as she becomes frustrated with practicing and breaks through the ice, emerging on the shores of a lake, and entering into another world filled with Americana symbolism from carnivals to cowboys that eventually lead her back to the rink.

Bock told the Creators Project she views, “the girl [as] symbolic of adolescence and the failure to learn a performance or role. I like the idea of performing on thin ice and the performance attire turning into an alienating and physical burden. Performance is a big thing in our culture—we all act out a role in some way or another.”

Grizzly Bear’s artistic, non-literal interpretation of their music falls in line perfectly with their other surrealist videos, while also continuing the music video’s revival of as an artistic format.