PROPS PAPER

A weekly newspaper on contemporary practices in image-making.

About the Project

PROPS PAPER is a bimonthly newspaper on image research that features work across architecture, art, design, science and beyond.

PROPS is the expanded design practice of Lucy Siyao Liu and Matthew Bohne. Matt and Lucy began their collaboration as undergraduates at Rhode Island School of Design, working on books, posters and various graphic ephemera for the Department of Architecture. Their interest in images emerged from their time in postgraduate studies at MIT and Yale School of Architecture. The exposure to the incredible image practices of artists and scientists prompted PROPS PAPER, an experiment in publication as a medium to explore critical spatial ideas in various fields of knowledge.

PROPS PAPER is a survey of processes by image-makers, image collectors and accidental image connoisseurs. It aims to provoke dialogue on imaging tools, techniques and methods across disciplinary boundaries to promote the acquisition of visual knowledge. PROPS PAPER is one two-sided broadsheet newspaper. The issues take on various formats: a newspaper, a hazmat suit, a game… it is a publication of things that act as props to extend conversations about our images, culture, politics and histories. PROPS PAPER is inspired by the fearlessly collaged contemporary practices of animators mapping the brain, artists sampling lichens, graphic designers hacking scanners and historians becoming filmmakers.

The PROPS PAPER team designed the graphic identity for the 2018 Boston Art Book Fair.

Read more on the project website.

PROPS on Twitter

PROPS on Instagram

PROPS on Facebook

PROPS PAPER is available in the MoMA Library Collection, at Archinect Outpost in Los Angeles and at IMPORT News in New York.

Schedule

PROPS at Boston Art Book Fair
October 12–14, 2018
The Cyclorama at Boston Center for the Arts
bostonartbookfair.com
The graphic identity for BABF 2018 was designed by Matthew Bohne and Lucy Liu, creators of PROPS.

PROPS at Press Play Fair
August 3 & 4, 2018
Pioneer Works, Red Hook, Brooklyn
pioneerworks.org/programs/press-play-fair-2018/

PROPS at Odds & Ends Art Book Fair
December 8, 2017 / 11:30am–4:30pm
Yale University Art Gallery
New Haven, Connecticut
artgallery.yale.edu
Odds & Ends Art Book Fair on Instagram

PROPS at Dutch Design Week
October 21–29, 2017
Eindhoven, Netherlands
worlddesignevent.org
designindaba.com

PROPS at Boston Art Book Fair
October 21 & 22, 2017
Boston Center for the Arts (BCA)
bostonartbookfair.com

About the Artists

Lucy Siyao Liu is a designer working on evolving representation techniques for cultural production. Her work addresses contestations and disjunctions that occur in imaging technologies, with an emphasis on exploring systems of nature through experimental drawings and animations. She holds an SMArchS in Design from MIT and a BFA and a BArch from the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2017-18, she taught courses on drawing and design as a lecturer in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT).

Matthew Bohne is a designer practicing in New York, focused on the research and experimentation of historical and contemporary linkages of architecture to fine arts. His background has influenced a practice that is built upon the making of objects and acts of drawings. His interest in graphic production, global infrastructure networks, and contemporary culture is fertile ground for exploring the “new” media and documents available to architects and designers as both polity and propaganda. He holds an MArch II from Yale School of Architecture and a BFA and a BArch from the Rhode Island School of Design.

More at the artists’ website: PROPS