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Alumni launch website, fax protest art to lawmakers to save arts funding

UCLA alumnus Levi Brooks is a co-founder of the studio Use All Five. The studio created the project “Artifax” to fax messages to members of Congress about art budget cuts.(Miriam Bribiesca/Photo editor)

By Lisa Aubry

April 10, 2017 10:58 p.m.

Los Angeles design studio Use All Five is bringing back the old-fashioned fax machine with its latest project “Artifax.”

Participants select a work of art displayed on the Artifax website and fax a print of it to a local representative or member of Congress along with a personal message, said Levi Brooks, a co-founder of Use All Five.

The studio launched “Artifax” on March 29 to fight President Donald Trump’s possible budget cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts. Use All Five was founded in 2006 by UCLA Design | Media Arts alumni Levi Brooks and Jason Farrell.

The project began after the “Artifax” team heard the election results and budget proposals of the new administration, Farrell said.

“We decided it should be our angle to get people speaking out and protesting the NEA cuts,” Farrell said.

If the country chooses to privatize funding for the arts instead of providing government funding, only certain regions will thrive in maintaining arts programs and education, he said. A wider selection of people’s voices from different backgrounds and viewpoints will therefore likely be lost.

[Related: Cuts to federal budget could jeopardize UCLA’s arts programs]

The name of the project “Artifax” references pieces of history while combining “fax” and “art,” said Troy Kreiner, art director at Use All Five.

Users can browse across a range of 23 artworks presented on the site, select the image that resonates most with them, add a personalized message and send it to a representative, said Yuji Sakuma, lead creative designer for “Artifax.”

Users on the “Artifax” website enter their zip codes to see who their representatives are. Then, fax software on the site allows the “Artifax” team to send the fax through a service that prints the art out at destinations across the country.

The team was stumped in January in deciding which medium would be most effective to reach representatives, Kreiner said. Representatives receive a massive influx of emails daily that might be glossed over while phone calls go to an automated machine or an assistant.

web.ae.useallfive.MB.PicB.jpg
Los Angeles design studio Use All Five has a new project called "Artifax," for which participants fax a photo of a piece of art to their local member of Congress. (Miriam Bribiesca/Photo editor)

But Kreiner noticed that government websites list the fax numbers of virtually every representative. Faxing as a means of reaching them has been underutilized.

“There is something inconveniencing about receiving the physicality of the fax paper,” Sakuma said. “It’s in your face, and it takes more effort to crinkle it up and throw it away.”

Artist Erik Benjamins’ work is presented as one of the 23 artworks users can choose from on the website. His piece includes a photograph of his own Facebook status update after the 2016 election results were released. The words on the sparse page read, “The weight of it all.”

The words are intentionally vague, allowing users to interpret the piece to apply their own personalized message.

“The work veers toward being a more nonpartisan, poetic gesture rather than one that is confrontational or more aggressive,” Benjamins said. “Since it evokes ideas of pressure and weight, it can be read in the literal or symbolic sense depending on the person reading it.”

[Related: Written on the Walls: Los Angeles street art illustrates history of political resistance]

Design | Media Arts professor Casey Reas also submitted an art piece to the Artifax webpage, and proceeded to fax his own piece to Senator Dianne Feinstein. His piece features a distorted, deconstructed visual of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 plaster life mask.

“I deconstructed the image of the object as a visual symbol of the idea of dismantling the arts and arts funding in the United States,” he said.

Though the styles of the art pieces vary drastically between the abstract, symbolic and infographic, they all emanate the same core message – protect the NEA.

“The idea that NEA funds could be eliminated is depressing and demoralizing. As a symbolic gesture, that shows what our relationship is as a country to the arts,” Benjamins said.

Many users’ personalized messages that accompany the artwork have brought Brooks to the verge of tears, he said. People wrote about their child’s trajectory changing after receiving arts education and the personal benefits they have received from arts therapy.

Reas wrote about his two children who are enrolled in Los Angeles Unified School District’s public schools to iterate his firm belief in the value behind arts education, he said.

“Most of what NEA funds is socially oriented arts programs like reaching youth through arts education,” Reas said. “To see that even such a small amount of funding could be lost will affect the lives of millions of citizens.”

Launched about a week ago, “Artifax” has averaged around 100 faxes daily with users stretching across the country from Alaska to Alabama, Brooks said. As of Monday, the “Artifax” team has yet to receive any responses from local representatives or members of Congress, he said.

“A dream of mine would be to get an email or photo of a senator holding up one of the faxes,” Brooks said.

Brooks hopes “Artifax” will accomplish two main goals: raise general awareness about NEA cuts and inspire people to take action by reaching out to representatives and voicing their concerns.

It would be devastating to lose arts programs and arts education, because art poses powerful, prodding questions about contemporary society, Sakuma said.

“Preserving art is crucial going into these next four years,” Sakuma said. “It is beyond just beautiful, and that can also spur conversation while elevating people’s points of views that don’t normally get the spotlight.”

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