Bringing Archives into the Present – A Frame in Frame Panel Discussion

This event is co-hosted by Swissnex Boston and New York.

We live in a designed world. The objects, spaces, and systems that shape our lives are not given — they are the product of contingent choices, each one a claim about who the world is for, what it should do, and who gets to decide.

Featuring a new generation of visionary designers, Bringing Archives into the Present examines design as a fundamental technology of civilization: the process by which human intention becomes material, ideas become systems, and values become behavior. Refusing nostalgia, this discussion asks how our world came to look this way, and how design choices, systems, and ideologies that once felt radical have come to seem inevitable.

The discussion will explore how historical context does not simply inform the present, it constructs it. In doing so, it recognizes the extraordinary responsibility and a rare opportunity given to designers: to see through the assumptions of our current reality, and to shape the path of the future. The future is not waiting to be discovered — it is being designed right now.

Frame in Frame, curated by Christian Herren, presents rediscovered Swiss structural films from the 1960s-90s. Vivid works unfold accross multiple projections at WSA within a spatial installation by Ben Ganz, Panter&Tourron, and Daan Couzijn, featuring furniture by Vitra, USM, Ruckstuhl, and ZHdK x Lehni. Presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland.

Image : 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

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

WSA, 161 Water Street, New York, United States

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