Allora and Calzadilla, “Manifest,” 2020, bat and bird guano, 15 × 7 × 3.5 feet and 15 × 6.8 × 3.25 feet. Gift of Leslie and Brad Bucher. Photo: Carolina Rios Robles Kelleher
Hulking in scale but delicate in texture, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s 2017 work Manifest is a to-scale cast of a Crowley Maritime cargo ship engine. The work, displayed in Gallery 309 in the MFAH’s Nancy and Rich Kinder building, is in two parts — as if split vertically — and each of these massive objects is made of a wood and metal core and hung from the wall. The work’s title, “manifest,” is provocative: defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the list of a ship’s cargo, signed by the master, for the information and use of Customs officers,” the artwork’s title signals the way this engine links simultaneously to global commerce and national borders. These linkages are, in this case, particular to Puerto Rico, which is the artists’ home as well as an “unincorporated territory” that has long suffered under U.S. coloniality.
Allora and Calzadilla, “Manifest,” (detail), 2020, bat and bird guano, 15 × 7 × 3.5 feet and 15 × 6.8 × 3.25 feet. Gift of Leslie and Brad Bucher. Photo: Carolina Rios Robles Kelleher
In 1898, the United States acquired Puerto Rico out of the Spanish-American War, in 1899, the U.S. devalued the Puerto Rican peso, which allowed American sugar corporations to buy land more easily and increased debt held by the American Colonial Bank, and in 1920, the Jones Act made it illegal for Puerto Rico to import any goods not arriving on a U.S. ship. As a result of these and many other juridical actions, the U.S. has extracted land, resources, and profits from Puerto Rico while simultaneously weakening the island’s financial independence. Moreover, the shipping container (a key contemporary tool for global trade, along with the Crowley-powered ships) can be linked to a longer history of shipping and colonization wherein the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade spurred Spain’s empire in Puerto Rico and throughout the Americas with the enslavement of Africans. In other words, overseas transport played a key role in the ongoing history of enslavement and resource extraction, which are signal components of colonialism and coloniality.
Allora and Calzadilla, “Manifest,” (detail), 2020, bat and bird guano, 15 × 7 × 3.5 feet and 15 × 6.8 × 3.25 feet. Gift of Leslie and Brad Bucher. Photo: Carolina Rios Robles Kelleher
In fact, the surface of Allora y Calzadilla’s Manifest is covered with a key resource — bat and bird guano — that was highly valued by the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. As part of a larger effort to accrue land and resources, the U.S. passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856. The law states that land may come under the possession of the U.S. “whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other government.” Guano was heavily mined in Puerto Rico and elsewhere as a fertilizer, and although the island was not acquired through the Guano Islands Act, its “unincorporated” status is linked to that act: Puerto Rico, like the more than 100 islands acquired through the Guano Islands Act, was annexed not as a full U.S. state but rather as a node of resources that would serve but not be protected by the U.S.
Allora and Calzadilla, “Manifest,” (detail), 2020, bat and bird guano, 15 × 7 × 3.5 feet and 15 × 6.8 × 3.25 feet. Gift of Leslie and Brad Bucher. Photo: Carolina Rios Robles Kelleher
With this (incomplete) history in mind, one can see the artwork’s title, Manifest in another way: “Manifest” is defined not only as “the list of a ship’s cargo,” but also as “a public proclamation or declaration; an open statement, a manifesto” (OED). Concentrating on the above history of shipping and guano legislation is to read the artwork partly in this way — that is, as a manifesto, a declaration with political purchase. While all of this is materially instantiated in the work, none of the juridical information is declared explicitly. In fact, the artwork’s physically imposing presence is felt more than anything else. Nevertheless, the large scale is held against the soft but brittle surface that is contoured with undulating grey tones of guano. This combination of an imposing but frail object makes the artwork appear ghost-like, and indeed, its materiality invokes one to think about the many bodies and resources ground up in the maw of coloniality. But the object’s ghostly appearance also derives from the fact that this engine is silent (contra its scale, which implies an enormous sonic potential), its surface is dry and cold (though such an engine, when running, must be oily and hot), and it is disconnected (unattached to anything that might propel a ship). So overdetermining are the ideas of Western development on a global scale, it is easy to see a turned-off and split-in-two shipping engine as lifeless — as if its running counterpart were alive, rather than part of a larger anthropocentrism and coloniality that is far more destructive than affirming of life.
Allora and Calzadilla, “Manifest,” (detail), 2020, bat and bird guano, 15 × 7 × 3.5 feet and 15 × 6.8 × 3.25 feet. Gift of Leslie and Brad Bucher. Photo: Carolina Rios Robles Kelleher
Indeed, this is part of the principal operation of the work — it simultaneously looks back to the histories it contains and forward to what it might provoke. One may see the guano-covered surface of greys, browns, and whites as something dynamic, the scrapes of pigment as a certain type of material history in motion. Perhaps Manifest is a ghost of development — a future-oriented projection where the functionless husk of coloniality lays prostrate, covered in guano, as nothing more than a relic.
Further Reading: Rocío Zambrana, Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021).
Citation on the Guano Islands Act (now 48 USC Chapter 8 – Guano Islands) is from section 1411, available here.
Manifest is on view in Gallery 309 of the MFAH’s Nancy and Rich Kinder Building.
Recent Comments