When we are seen without judgment or condition, we are known. When we are known, we become aware that we belong to each other.
It is such an awareness that might change this world.
For close to two decades I’ve sat utterly still with countless people in front of my camera, and over time it became increasingly clear that there’s another way. A way to tear down the walls that exist between people and in doing so, expose us to the human soul and a common humanity, and an awareness that we belong to each other. It also became clear that this very same way exposes us to a conscious flow of insight that causes us to act differently, and to speak with an entirely courageous voice. It’s this voice that I’ve made my films from. I call this way to witness the human soul, Inner View.
Nic Askew
Soul Biographies Inner View
The focal point of this work is human connection and our ability to see each other deeply and in doing so, know ourselves. As an experience beyond its idea.
I never set out to do any of this. It found me in a moment of unintended stillness, and for the last two decades I’ve given my life to it.
Over the years I’ve been asked the very same question consistently, ‘where do you find these people?’.
At first I’d joke that I happened to live in the very postal code full with people willing to reveal themselves behind the mask, but of course I understood that many had probably meant to say ‘this is not how I experience people.’
But, this is how I experience people. And it became clear that the film subjects in the Soul Biographies Collection are a reflection of all of us. There is no one who does not possess a profoundly mysterious inner life, a life that if witnessed might change everything.
And so it became clear to me that the contribution here is in pointing to how we might see and be seen without judgment or condition. So that we may catch sight of this interior world of the human soul, and come to realize that we belong to each other.
The film portraits in the Soul Biographies Collection are evidence that we belong, and an opportunity to pay an undivided and unconditional attention to another, so that we are better prepared to do so out in the world where it counts.
Endeavor to witness these films in the same way in which they’ve been made – Inner View.
The basics are as follows;
Start with Nothing. No-thing. No act on your part. For this moment in time set down your requirement to compare, to understand, to make sense of, to know where this is going, to translate, to seek value, to add value, to fix anything at all. Let the experience of each film subject find you, not you them. Like the experience of extraordinary music that finds you and fills you without need to have anything done to it.
Witnessing is not an act on your part.
Let it. Simply let it.
Do not attempt if distracted. View full screen. Use headphones, unless you are screening to an audience.
Notice what finds you. Not what you find. What finds you. This is the other way around.
We have some tutorials coming soon. A deeper dive into Inner View. If you are a member of the FILM LIST you will receive them.
For now, know this.
To witness another without condition is perhaps the greatest gift we can offer another. For in that moment they are set free, and might become aware that they belong. And this could change the trajectory of a life.
Everything here is about this.
