A B O U T

Design Date is a live version of the British Tv Show “Blind Date”, where you don’t look for a romantic partner but a partner in your professional life – it is all about charming and being charmed.

For Design Academy Eindhoven’s #TVClerici show at Palazzo Clerici this year, Depot Basel was invited to host Design Date for their show centred around media.

On the 6th of April Job Smeets came to find his match on the topic of “Virtual Reality and Alter Ego”. Job sent in three questions in advance and the contestants prepared their answers in a written out script.

S C R I P T

Virtual Reality and Alter Ego – Job Smeets
Thursday 6th April

Alice Wong

Who were you?

I was not remembered.

Who are you?

My name is Alice Wong, I am able to reproduce my experience from memory as well as reconstruct my experience in memory. I think I am the memory of myself and I am nothing more than an illusion.

Who will you be?

I will be part of a collective memories from the people whom know me.

Jella van Eck

Who were you?

An artistic person, being literally bad in everything in school but art, I decided to study art.  Wanting to express my creativity to the outside world through a 2D art form. But art proved to be too old school, so I decided the only box I could fit in was design.

Who are you?

Someone who knows the endless possibilities of letting my creativity loose. Using different mediums to tell my story and engaging the audience to have a look into untold present-time stories that I feel need a stage. Focussing mainly on film as it is my passion. And not to forget somebody with 12 k followers on Instagram.

Who will you be?

A professional that is in balance between projects that are personal passion babies and making projects within big industries such as the film production industry. Working on topics influencing the ever changing world we live in now. And opening peoples eyes.

Clara Escalera

Who were you? 

I used to be a quite confused young girl who made her path by cancellation process. Everything I wasn’t made me everything I was. I tried here and there, letting myself go with the creative process, designing products, social experiences, costumes… No outstanding strength other that the fact I was up to everything, seeing solutions rather than problems.

Who are you? 

Now I’m a fluid designer. Still up to anything but getting an attachment to fashion and its possibilities. Sometimes I feel fashion is the ultimate design, its something anyone with a body can identify themselves into quickly, and I love the possibilities it has: you can make a very beautiful piece and you can give the biggest statement in the world at the same time. It not only has to do with aesthetics, but also with identity; the forced identity a garments gives to the wearer, the alter ego. Fashion can literally possess the wearer, for good and bad: when you wear something sexy you feel sexy, overexposed, when you are wearing something from the opposite sex or really gangster, or from another time it determines your attitude too… It’s like magic!

Who will you be? 

Can’t promise this fashion thing will be eternal, although I would love to somehow… Maybe next month I already got over it and I want to start making life simulator video-games, which is one of my passions (to play, not to make them). But actually I am super open… I’m excited for the future, I really don’t want to die yet, and when I’m 80, I want to have this retrospective exhibition about my work in which nobody can believe  how much different work can a person do in a lifetime. I don’t believe in proper compromising or in fixed design identities… its tricky for marketing, I know… but let’s see.