The Transient: Palindromic Nomadisms and Invisible Transports

The chapter focuses on spaces that are also entities unto themselves, but, in this case, without having a rooted position. This concerns vehicles as both means and site, tracing how transit may not necessarily imply mobility as a desirable condition, but as one that is at best a strategy of distraction, as in providing a form of narrative and rhythm to otherwise scattered lives, or, at worst, a mode of exploitation, functioning as the catalyst of victimisation and oppression, as in human trafficking. In this section, then, we contemplate the human, in varying degrees of agency, passivity, or captivity. The case studies are: Clare Bayley’s The Container (2007 (2009)), Cora Bissett and Stef Smith’s Roadkill (2010 (2012)) and Rachel De-lahay’s Circles (2014).