Jasmin Bauomy

**We’re interviewing creators from Audio Flux’s first two circuits—you can listen to them now.**

Before you read, quickly listen to Jasmin’s Fluxwork ‘Zephyra and the Whisper’ here. It takes three minutes!

Interview by Devin Andrade of Podstack.

Jasmin Bauomy is an Egyptian-German audio journalist and podcast producer based in Berlin, Germany. She's also the founder of THE ECCO, an international association for audio people of all sorts built around self-organized creative retreats that are connected to listening events around the world. 

What previous media/creations of your own or by others helped inspire you for this?
I have always loved the stories of  "A Thousand and One Nights," though I felt they needed a modern touch and a perspective that doesn’t solely cater to the Western ear. The storytelling style and themes of jinns and living elements drew me in, inspiring me to create a narrative for AudioFlux. There’s a book called “Alif the Unseen”, which is another magical realism book that combines hacking with jinn and it has occupied my mind ever since I read it and made me look at the world through a lens that is a lot of fun because it makes you notice and observe things that had been invisible to you before. And then, there’s the documentary "32 Sounds" that served as a prompt for our cohort. In it, we’re introduced to Annea Lockwood's concept of "listening with". There’s a scene, where she just sits and listens “with” everything around her. And the idea that our surroundings might be listening to us in the same way that we’re listening to them snuck into my head. The movie als features this quote: "The air itself is one vast library, on whose pages is written all that man has ever said or whispered." That resonated deeply with me, and shaped this idea of the wind as a keeper of our stories.

If you were to create a follow-up episode about a different element of nature, what would you choose next?
I would probably choose the element of water. Water offers a natural soundscape and omnipresence. It moves by itself and we have the power to move it, too. That opens up so many doors for stories. The fact, that it flows through all life, binding us together. I envision a water jinn, nurturing yet furious about pollution, embodying both serenity and rage.

You used this creative character out of the wind to tell your story - was this way of thinking about the wind something you had always thought about or did it come to you specifically for this project?
The wind has always been significant in my life, growing up by the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and in the windy city of Hamburg, Germany. I feel, the wind pushes me into the present, sweeping away my thoughts. I've always thought of the wind as a character. I’d get angry at it whenever it would throw me off course, or when I had to fight against it to get ahead. I’d find myself whispering “stop it” or “that’s enough” or I’d feel challenged to a fight. I always perceived the wind as a really moody and mischievous element. And when I thought about creating a fiction piece, I quickly realized that these are usually attributes of jinn. Now, whether you believe in jinn or some form of magic in the air, that’s up to each one of us. 

If you were to create another experimental three minute piece like this one, what lessons that you learned from this would you take with you to the next?
One key lesson is to remember that it takes way more time to create a well crafted 3 minute piece than a 30 minute piece. So, I’d account for that. Another thing I learned is that it’s totally okay to be strategic about the way you craft a 3-minute story. Because you have so little time, you need to make every word and action count. And being strategic with your words doesn’t mean you’re in any way less artistic.

And with all these initiatives sometimes it can feel like the pieces I make are frivolous. In fact, someone told me Zephyra and the Whisper was a frivolous piece. And I disagree with that notion. For me, it carries significant meaning and making it drove me to start a few other projects.. I produced Zephyra during a time of global turmoil, with news of wars, catastrophes, and rising right-wing politics, and of course after a disastrous year for audio creators worldwide.  It was a way to cope with the fear and insecurity and to feel connected through shared hopes and dreams. Next time, I might want to find a story more rooted in reality. A narrative not from within me, but an observation of the human condition.

What do you hope Audio Flux does for other creatives in the industry right now?
I hope AudioFlux inspires others to start their own projects and create without waiting for commercial validation. That’s what it did for me.  Many ideas fade away because they aren’t seen as marketable or profitable. But I think we should just make our content and share it with the world without always expecting to get paid for it. That feeling that you don’t have to sell an idea, but you get to just create it because you believe in it, and a bunch of people you look up to believe in it, too – that’s a big driver. And it feels like you’re stepping into a communal space where the craft of storytelling and practice of listening are celebrated. It’s what we need right now. That – and a way to make it financially sustainable, rather than profitable. 

Thanks, Jasmin!