Photo provided by YourArt.
“YourArt” is an online media platform that allows viewers to see visual arts from a new perspective by explaining complicated art terminology and the history of art in a millennial-friendly way. When translated literally from its Korean title, the company is called culture and art for you to emphasize that they create media for a specific targeted audience. The medium currently has over 115 thousand subscribers on YouTube where they have uploaded more than 125 videos online as of March 2020. Ewha Voice recently interviewed Oh Dae-woo, the CEO of YourArt, to discuss their work to this point and their aspirations.
Oh founded the media startup in May 2018 to create a cultural art platform that targets millennials. He often had difficulty reading mainstream art and culture magazines despite his interest in them and soon realized it was because those publications often contained unfamiliar jargon that only select members of the art industry would understand. Prior to their launch, there had been only a few public forums for young cultural and artistic enthusiasts in Korea.
“Many young people tell themselves they should be reading more books and attending art exhibitions at least once a month, but they end up not taking them into action,” Oh said. “These people are our target audience. Traditional art media uses numerous difficult terms in their self-centered storytelling. However, we see art as a form of experience, and we’re trying to offer those experiences to those who have a desire to immerse themselves in the world of art but are unable to due to lack of time and financial issues.”
When asked about the video-making process, he shared that the process is very simple, starting with the team members suggesting topics they want to cover in the form of a script.
“We observe each other’s reaction like whether we yawn or lose focus too easily. After the topics are chosen, we discuss the composition and decide in which direction the story will be told,” Oh added.
Oh stressed that although the process of making a video may seem simple, the team discussions they have after publishing videos online is the most crucial part of their business. The entire staff of five normally work at home but get together once a week to have a discussion about the results and the reactions their videos have received online.
Photo provided by YourArt.
Considering the performance of their previous videos, they sort out videos based on Key Performance Indicator (KPI), a term which determines the performance of one’s business. Oh indicated that YourArt’s KPI is not measured by the number of subscribers gained or the accumulated views of a video, but on the duration of viewing time as it indicates how long the viewers were able to immerse themselves in their content.
“The video ‘Why are there so many crowns in the works of Basquiat?’ talks about the symbols such as skeletons, organs and crowns in the works of Jean Michel Basquiat, an American artist known for his neo-expressionist paintings,” Oh said. “It is the most memorable video we have made so far as its index performance had doubled compared to other videos.”
YourArt also provides written forms of their video essays on 1boon.
“Currently, we are only covering the field of visual arts, but in the future, we would like to explore more genres and develop into a global media platform for people of all ages. We want to be the representative media that comes into mind when people think of art.”