Fluxism in Photography: The Pure Perception Laboratory by Siarhei Mikhaliuk

In March 2026, at the Savitsky Art Gallery in Minsk, within the exhibition space of “Fluxism. Your Trace in the Universe” — a showcase of the philosophical and artistic movement in photography founded by Siarhei Mikhaliuk — a laboratory called “Pure Perception” took place.

For centuries, photography was the result of conscious control. The photographer managed light, composition, the decisive moment. They decided what would remain in the frame and what would disappear. Even when working with long exposure, they remained the conductor, managing chaos.

This approach hasn’t exhausted itself because it became bad. It exhausted itself because the world has changed.

In an era when neural networks generate images from text prompts, control is no longer a value. An algorithm can reproduce any aesthetic, any composition, any light. Except one thing: the authenticity of human presence.

Siarhei Mikhaliuk says: “Fluxism begins where total control ends and the wholeness of perception awakens.”

What happens when a photographer stops looking through the viewfinder, and dancers stop imposing mental images and rules on their bodies? What happens to a person when they consciously abandon the tyranny of the result and dedicate themselves to the process?

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Ten trained dancers and choreographers with developed bodily awareness entered the space without one condition — without relying on the familiar. The intellectual channel, dominant in human perception, was intentionally minimized.

Step by step, carefully listening to Siarhei Mikhaliuk and interacting with their bodies in a special way, the dancers immersed themselves in a state of pure perception — to move as if they had never known their bodies, as if tasting a fruit unknown to the mind for the first time. Such improvisation doesn’t just break patterns; it creates unique ground for the awakening of a new self.

The camera, in the hands of a person in this primordial state, extracts from space not objects and mental images illuminated by light, but the light poetry of the author’s perception — and this is the uniqueness of the method Mikhaliuk has discovered.

What emerged as a result cannot be called photography in the usual sense. These are traces. Traces of intersecting trajectories of presence and states of ten inner impulses that will never repeat again. Because they formed not from a confluence of specific circumstances, but from trust in the flow of sensations.

In traditional photography, the photographer’s body is an appendage of the eye. It is needed to deliver the camera to the location and hold it at the moment of shooting.

In Mikhaliuk’s Fluxism, the body becomes the main instrument of perception. The eye, separated from primordial feeling, uses intellect to imagine harmony — it seeks the beautiful, the familiar, the expected. Bodily perception is primary. It senses the nameless, that which has not yet passed through the filter of awareness.

This is why the laboratory involved dancers — people with developed proprioceptive sensitivity, capable of maintaining a state “before thought”: when movement is born not from the desire to repeat a learned form, but from the search for pure sensation. They do not perform choreography. They become generators of primary material from which the image will later manifest.

Fluxism is a philosophical and artistic movement in conceptual photography, founded by Siarhei Mikhaliuk on April 12, 2025, which transforms the camera from an instrument for fixing the external world into a “walking stick of consciousness” and a seismograph of internal states. The image arises not from the gaze, but from a holistic bodily impulse channeled through the flow of sensations. It is a practice of returning to authenticity through the renunciation of visual control, where creativity becomes an act of living, not constructing, and each trace of light is a unique biometric signature of a moment of presence.

At its heart is work with pure, pre-logical perception: a state in which sensation has not yet been replaced by its interpretation.

“The thought of the sun is not the perception of the sun,” says Mikhaliuk.

Names are the result of the mind. Perception is the process of the existence of “I,” and it is always in the present tense. Its givenness is fluidity and primordiality.

The power of creative thought lies in concentrated and directed focus on a consciously chosen goal. The art of thought acquires special charm when it sees itself in the infinite ocean of quiet consciousness, accessible to a person in a state of holistic perception — it is precisely this state that Mikhaliuk explores through photography.

Photography in Fluxism ceases to be a representation of an external object. It becomes an event of manifestation. The image is not taken, but manifests from the intersection of states — of the dancers, the space, and the light.

Three Levels of Authenticity: Is it Possible to Copy Fluxism?

Fluxism, as formulated by Siarhei Mikhaliuk, is often reduced to mere technique or style. However, it’s crucial to understand that this phenomenon exists on three fundamentally different levels. Only the last of them constitutes its true essence.

Level One: Technique (accessible to thousands)

This is the simplest layer. Any photographer can read about long exposure, close their eyes, and start moving with the camera. At this level, abstract, blurred images are born. They may even be aesthetic and interesting. But this is merely the outer contour of Fluxism. Thousands of people can master this technique in a short time. It’s the level of “how,” not “what.”

Level Two: Methodology of Embodiment (accessible to hundreds)

This is a deeper layer. It requires not just mechanical movement, but conscious work with the body. This is the level of dancers, of those practiced in Eastern disciplines, of people with developed proprioception. Here, the photographer ceases to be just a “camera operator.” They enter into a dialogue with their body, learn to feel impulses, distinguish nuances of muscle tension and relaxation.

This is a methodology that can be taught, mastered practically, while still relying on information and intellect. Hundreds of people can reach this level, turning physicality into an instrument. But even this is not the final stage.

“The wind carried away the leaves from the tree of reason, and only then did I see the moon of impression,”

Mikhaliuk himself describes this act.

This is the level of primordial movement, where all “doing” ends and “being” begins. This is neither technique nor methodology. This is a state in which the boundary between the photographer, the camera, and the world dissolves.

There is no intention to “create a frame.” There is only the pure, pre-logical sensation of presence — the same heightened state that the dancers explored through their bodies in the “Pure Perception” laboratory.

Photography at this level is born not as a result of effort, but as a spontaneous trace of the intersection of a person’s inner light with the external flow of reality. This is an event that cannot be planned, repeated, or simulated. It occurs only when the author completely releases control and allows perception to flow through the body, rediscovering themselves.

This is why such Fluxism, in its authentic sense, is inaccessible to copying. Thousands will copy the technique. Hundreds will master the methodology. But the projection of pure perception will remain the domain of a few — those who are ready not just to “shoot,” but to be. Those for whom each frame, due to the primordial nature of the state, will be unique.

Copying a state of open perception is impossible because, by its very nature, pure perception happens for the first time every time.

This is why Fluxism, as formulated by Mikhaliuk, captures not an external form, but an event of unique presence. It is irreproducible by definition. This is Fluxism’s answer to the era of artificial intelligence. An algorithm can generate programmed aesthetics. It cannot generate that which has no name — the authenticity of experience.

The “Pure Perception” laboratory by Siarhei Mikhaliuk was not a masterclass or training. It was a research space where a hypothesis was tested: can the body, freed from the dictatorship of mental images, create an image more authentic than any programmed reality?

The results of this test exist:

— Numerous light imprints in the project at the exhibition “Fluxism. Your Trace in the Universe”
— A book of the same name — a philosophical and artistic manifesto of holistic perception
— The scientific hypothesis of Light Motor Neurography (LMN)

But the main result is something else. It is that everyone who comes into contact with the process of this state leaves a trace. A trace that cannot be faked. A trace that speaks with its sincerity: I am. I feel. I live.

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Author of the project — choreographer, photographer, and philosopher, founder of Fluxism in photography Siarhei Mikhaliuk

With Open Perception Toward the Discovery

of Fluxism in Photography.

Why Does the Body Become Optics?

What is Fluxism in Photography?

Three Levels of Authenticity: Is it Possible to Copy Fluxism?