by Edoardo Takacs 

In this collage I wanted to demonstrate that our own Hell, or destruction, will be self imposed, our end will be of our own doing. In the center left of the right panel of Hell we can see a depiction of Non-Human Henchmen in Blue robes ruling over men in hell and a man being hung on a dangling key. Overall, this panel is meant to represent what the repercussions of man’s sins will be and the suffering that will be brought upon us. When looking over this segment of the right panel I wanted to find imagery of man's own doing that brings our own destruction. Immediately, I thought of Arendt's 1958 book Human Condition and her writings about new technologies and their implications for humanity. Given our technological ability to destroy all organic life and to leave earth behind, Arent asks what is the language and boundaries that we will set around it. Ardent states that scientific truth can only be demonstrated through mathematical formulas and proved technologically, and so they cannot lend themselves to normal expression in speech and thought. Furthermore, Arendt states that because we, who are “earthbound creatures,” (3) are now starting to act as “dwellers of the universe” (3), we will be unable to coherently explain and speak about the things in which we are nevertheless able to do. Consequently, we will lend ourselves to artificial machines to think and speak for us, thus giving agency to technologies that we may not even understand. Arendt states that if our knowledge and thought part ways, we will become slaves, not to our machines but more to our “know how”(3). Thus, we will become devoid of our own thoughts and be at the will of “every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is” (3). Arendt is warning us about how scientific achievement can possibly render language powerless as it will create such a gap in between the two. Thus I chose to use a man who is hung from Giotto di Bondone’s painting The Last of Judgement because Giotto illustrates this figure in hell to be conscious– clearly alive to witness his own suffering and the suffering of their fellow sinners. I then used chains from a painting by Josiah Wedgwood, a British ceramics maker and abolitionist, around 1787. The painting is an image of a kneeling slave asking  "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" I then attached these chains to an atomic bomb that was used as an advertisement in the Cold War in support of the US’ creation of Nuclear Weaponry. In this advertisement it is written in the top left corner “Dedicated to America’s defense” but how can a weapon of such destruction be for defense when it will only insight more violence and destruction? I wanted to use these three images together to evoke Ardent’s warning about the possibility that we will become enslaved and destroyed by our own technologies. Furthermore, the figure is looking down at the people who are responsible for this suffering. Instead of keeping the non-human henchmen in blue robes I chose to switch them out for the ones who are culpable. I used the faces of politicians who have been bought by large corporations, the CEO’s a major corporation and Prospero from The Tempest, who is meant to represent that it is these people who hold the power to destroy humanity. In the end, our hell will be brought on by the few who have the power to make the choice for the many.