JAN SÖDER
JAN SÖDER, Interior Designer
Interview by GEIR HARALDSETH
Film still from Jumana Manna's video 7 Men on a Vault.
two-channel projection, 4 mins.
Jan Söder has been shaping how Swedish hospitality looks for four decades. He started at the Scandinavian Airlines Design Agency in the mid-eighties, where he was Creative Director for several years, and the discipline of that work carries into everything since: a whole environment considered at once, down to the detail a guest never consciously registers. He was the overhead creative and interior designer behind Nordic Sea Hotel and Nordic Light Hotel in central Stockholm, and behind the Blue Hotel at Lidingö. In 2008 he founded the design agency Redbarn, opening with a contemporary hotel in central Beijing. In 2014 he led the overall design concept for The Winery Hotel. His collaboration with Joaquim goes back to Nordic Light, and has continued for years since. Interiors and lighting are not sequential steps in their work. They are argued out together, which is the only way either one holds up.
Ava Gardner & Marilyn Monroe
BYJoyce Carol OatesWhat a sleek hot-skinned little rat-beauty she was. No one like her in all of Hollywood. Ohhh, God. The Blond Actress got high staring at, rating. Envious of the Brunette. No need to bleach her pubic hair, oh! The Blond Actress's dark roots.
Yet in her presence, the Blond Actress was shy. It was the Brunette who approached looking at seductive. Both women had come to the party (at a Venetian palace or a house overlooking a Bel Air canyon) in the near distance mirroring as of Shangri-La without male escorts. Yet both women were married. Or were they? The hot-skinned little rat-beauty from rural North Carolina. The LA-born Okie marriage-hungry.
They were on a balcony. Night air and mist. The Brunette was saying, “Why is she so serious?” — smiling.
Had they been discussing this subject? What subject? The Blond Actress was confused.
The Brunette had soared to fame at notoriety years before the ascension of Marilyn Monroe, and yet was not much her elder.
Saying, “Nothing, the movies, it's mostly that.” As the Blond Actress protested, “Oh, but — it's my life,” in the Brunette's soft drawling, “Bullshit, Marilyn. Only life is your life. Marilyn.”
Their stage millionaire producer host had seated the Blond Actress at the Brunette at opposite end of the table, as a conversation. Everyone says the Brunette is beautiful. Is that fair, she's not. Oh, God.
It was said of the Brunette beauty that she walked through her films only performing scene after scene in a trance while the directors directed, with few retakes. She had a perfect body, not so heavy as the Blond Actress, not with the Blond Actress's billowy rear. You saw that face and thought of Botticelli.