NEW YORK, NY.- Frame in Frame – Swiss Design in Motion opens to the public on May 15th in New York, marking the first U.S. presentation of over 200 rediscovered experimental films produced in Switzerland between the 1960s and 1990s. Today, the exhibition programming is unveiled: a week of walkthroughs, screenings, and a panel discussion exploring how structural thinking shaped the canonic form of the Swiss Style.

The exhibition unfolds as a spatial installation in which film, furniture, and lighting operate as a single system, allowing sequences, rhythms and structures to interact. Developed at the Basel School of Design, the films extend the principles of Swiss graphic design - grid, modularity, and typography — into the moving image, offering an early and influential exploration of motion design. Modular seating by Panter&Tourron forms a flexible landscape for viewing, while Ben Ganz x ZHdK x Lehni shelving structures the projection architecture, and USM elements organize the space as a functional bar. The installation begins with the formal language of late modernism and traces how these logics are carried forward into adaptable, reconfigurable environments such as the “Anagram” sofa. In contrast, pieces like the “Stripes” carpet by Trix and Robert Haussmann and the “Cloud Lamp” by Susi and Ueli Berger

introduce a deliberate counterpoint, shifting the installation, like the films themselves, from strict, rule-based systems toward more open, perceptual expressions. Curated by Christian Herren and presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Frame in Frame places design and film in dialogue — two practices bound by the same concern for composition, rhythm, and frame.

Film still from Frame in Frame – Swiss Design in Motion, part of a corpus of around 200 experimental films shown for the first time in the United States, orchestrated by artist Daan Couzijn in a multi-channel video and audio installation.
Courtesy FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Media Library, Film + Design collection

Throughout the week, four walkthroughs invite visitors behind the scenes. On Friday, May 15th, designers Stefano Panterotto and Alexis Tourron will present their contributions — the Anagram sofa (Vitra), the bar (USM), and their lighting pieces — followed by Ben Ganz and ZHdK on the ZHdK x Lehni collaboration. On Sunday, May 17th, curator Christian Herren is joined by artist Daan Couzijn to explore the installation and the dialogue it stages between furniture and film. The series closes on Tuesday, May 19th, with a final walkthrough by Christian.

Alongside the walkthroughs, special screenings of short films by Charles and Ray Eames (Powers of Ten) and Sarah Morris (AM/PM and Miami) run daily throughout the week. Rather than telling stories in a conventional sense, these films explore perception through sequence, repetition and timing, highlighting the way we see–a principle that extends throughout the installation. To gain a sense of how the experimental films extend the principles of Swiss graphic design into the moving image, please see the trailer HERE.

Curator Christian Herren shares, “By including Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, the Basel films are placed within structural film — a practice that does not tell stories but organizes perception. Developed alongside the Basel course Film + Design, Powers of Ten (1968/1977) moves from a single fixed point through clearly defined steps, expanding from the human scale to the cosmic and microscopic. As a key reference in Frame in Frame, it shows how film can emerge from design and architecture. The Basel films extend this approach: rooted in graphic design, they translate its principles into moving image, yet remain largely overlooked today. The work of contemporary artist Sarah Morris continues this exploration. AM/PM presents the Las Vegas Strip as a controlled visual environment, while Miami structures the city as a sequence rather than a narrative. In both, repetition and editing shape perception, revealing the city as a system of shifting scales.”

Film still from "AM/PM", 1999, 16mm/HD Digital, 12 minutes 26 seconds. © Sarah Morris.

Additionally, on Saturday, May 16th, creative director and editor Ruba Abu Nimah moderates Bringing Archives into the Present: Where We Come From, Where We Are, Where We're Going, a panel co-hosted with Swissnex, in conversation with curator Christian Herren, designer Ben Ganz, designers Panter&Tourron, graphic designer Julia Schäfer, and design student Alice Wery from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Across generations of Swiss design, the panel turns research into a tool for the present: not nostalgia, but a way to ask who designs the future, and for whom.