Ioannis Mitrou
Mitrou Yiannis is a theoretical physicist, philosopher-psychoanalyst, visual/performance artist, exhibition curator, and researcher in the field of Media Philosophy in relation to Psychoanalysis. He taught for seven consecutive years at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in the Department of Visual and Applied Arts and in the interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program "Art and the Public Sphere." He teaches in the Postgraduate Program in Philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a specialist researcher at Sorbonne Université, INSERM, Centre de Recherche Saint-Antoine (CRSA), Paris, France. He served for 10 years as a researcher at the Laboratory of Philosophical Research on the Imaginary, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Centre de Recherche sur l'Imaginaire, Université STENDHAL-GRENOBLE III, and he is a researcher at the Grotowski Institute (Wrocław, Poland, 2003–); Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards (Pontedera, Italy, 2005–2017). He is also Artistic Director of the International Forum of Performance Art (IFPA) and a researcher at the Visual Culture Lab, University of Thessaly.
Articles of Ioannis Mitrou
From Subject to Project: Flusser, Lacan, and the AI Transformation of Being
This paper explores the transformation of subjectivity by staging a dialogue between Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of the subject—understood as the subject of the unconscious—and Vilém Flusser's concept of the projekt, extending this dialogue into the contemporary landscape of artificial intelligence and technical images. Lacan conceives the subject as fundamentally split, constituted through language, desire, and the symbolic order; Flusser, meanwhile, redefines the human as a "project" embedded within technical apparatuses and programmed systems. Read together, these two frameworks unsettle the notion of autonomous subjectivity, recasting agency as mediated, contingent, and structurally constrained.
In the age of artificial intelligence, the nature and function of technical images call for renewed critical scrutiny. Building on Flusser's account of technical images as apparatus-generated abstractions, this paper examines how AI-generated images transform the epistemological and ontological status of visual media. Produced through algorithmic processes with minimal direct human intervention, these images intensify Flusser's concerns about the erosion of historical narrative, while also demanding a psychoanalytic account of subjectivity, desire, and representation. Drawing on Lacanian theory, the paper analyzes AI-generated images as mediators between the Imaginary and the Symbolic that simultaneously brush against the Real, where jouissance surfaces as excess and disruption beyond symbolization. Such images participate in the formation of the subject of the unconscious and structure new configurations of desire. The algorithmic image thus operates as a mirror that both reflects and constructs the gaze—no longer exclusively human, but machinic, distributed, and operationalized through code.
Through examples drawn from generative AI and machine vision, the paper argues that these images engage in processes analogous to unconscious formation, projecting imaginaries and shaping psychical structures. By bringing Flusser's media philosophy into dialogue with Lacanian psychoanalysis, this study shows how AI-generated imagery not only mediates perception but also reprograms the relations among the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real, inscribing these registers within technical and algorithmic apparatuses. The proliferation of such imagery destabilizes the conventional distinction between subject and object, reconfigures the production of desire and agency, and calls for a reconsideration of perception, intentionality, and the psychic economy of contemporary subjectivity. Ultimately, the machinic gaze emerges as a site where human and artificial perception intersect, reshaping both the collective imagination and the field of jouissance in post-digital visual culture.
Phenomenological crossroads between Husserl and Flusser. Toward a Phenomenology of the Image in the post-digital age of AI
This article examines the phenomenological relationship between Edmund Husserl’s foundational ideas on intentionality, perception, and consciousness, and Vilém Flusser’s media-philosophical critique of technical images. While Husserl laid the groundwork for understanding consciousness as always directed toward objects through intentional acts, Flusser extended this logic to consider how new media—specifically technical images—restructure the horizon of intentional experience. Through a comparative reading, we argue that Flusser offers a post-phenomenological extension of Husserlian thought, addressing the historical evolution of appearance and its mediation through apparatuses. By situating technical images within the lifeworld (Lebenswelt), the article shows how Flusser’s theory can be understood as a phenomenology of post-industrial perception, where the image no longer reveals the world, but instead simulates it, altering the structure of intentionality itself. Ultimately, we propose a synthesis that sees Flusser’s technical image not merely as a cultural artifact but as a new noematic layer within phenomenological experience, calling for a reconsideration of subjectivity and meaning in the digital age.
The construction of happiness in the world of technical images: from Aristotelian ‘’ευδαιμονία (eudaimonia)’’ to the image-synthesis of Vilém Flusser
This paper explores the concept of happiness in modern times through the lens of Vilém Flusser’s technical image comparing it to the Aristotelian concept of eudaimonia. According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is the supreme good to which human beings should dedicate their life. The process of finding eudaimonia is an extremely difficult journey. Is this concept still valid in the age of technical images that compose the reality around us? What does happiness mean in this situation? How can we give any meaning to it? An answer to these questions can be found in Flusser’s thought.