Reading Between the Ribs of Maine’s Maritime History
reimagining how our communities engage monuments, archives, and one another through shared inquiry, artistic practice, and public memory
Atlantic Black Box and our partners are thrilled to share something we’ve been building toward for a long time. Interco(a)stal has officially launched!
Interco(a)stal: Reading Between the Ribs of Maine’s Maritime History is a yearlong collaboration bringing together artists, historians, Black and Wabanaki community members, knowledge keepers, archivists, researchers, museum professionals, students, and local residents to examine Maine’s maritime history through the intertwined legacies of enslavement, colonization, labor, migration, ecology, and resistance, asking how these stories might reshape our relationship to one of New England’s most iconic monuments, to the past, and to one another.
Interco(a)stal has been selected as one of just ten projects nationwide in Monument Lab’s 2026 Re:Generation cohort, a national initiative supporting bold, community-centered approaches to rethinking monuments and reshaping public memory. Learn more about Interco(a)stal
Convened by Atlantic Black Box in partnership with The Third Place, Maine Maritime Museum, and Bomazeen Land Trust, the project has already grown into an extraordinary collaboration involving more than fifty researchers, artists, community members, knowledge keepers, archivists, educators, and cultural practitioners.
Together, we’re asking:
What stories lie just beneath the surface of Maine’s celebrated maritime history?
What happens when we read between the ribs of archives, monuments, and public memory?
How might historical recovery, narrative return, artistic practice, and community dialogue reshape the stories we tell about this place?
Our work centers on the Wyoming Evocation, located on the campus of Maine Maritime Museum. This monumental skeletal sculpture commemorates the Wyoming, the largest wooden vessel ever built. Rather than treat the monument as a finished statement about the past, Interco(a)stal approaches it as an open question and site of inquiry — a place where overlooked histories, multiple ways of knowing, and new relationships can emerge.
Join us for our first public event
We’re especially excited to welcome internationally acclaimed South African visual artist and researcher Dr. Meghna Singh, whose work explores the intersection of augmented reality, public space, memory, and social justice. Her upcoming public talk will offer an early glimpse into the kinds of questions and creative approaches shaping Interco(a)stal, and will launch a week of collaboration with artists and researchers working across the project.
| Reclaiming Public Space Augmented Reality as Art, Memory, and Resistance with Dr. Meghna Singh Tuesday, July 28, 2026 | 6:00 PM 7:00 PM hybrid event, in person and online Maine Maritime Museum | 243 Washington Street, Bath, ME |
In this public talk, South African visual artist and researcher Dr. Meghna Singh will explore how augmented reality can deepen our relationships to place, memory, and community by making overlooked histories visible within the spaces where they continue to resonate. Beginning with examples of AR work from around the world, she will introduce how artists, activists, and communities are using immersive technologies for public storytelling, place-based learning, and critical engagement with contested sites.Singh will highlight two of her own collaborative AR projects, The Founders Pillars and Confront Extraction, to consider AR not simply as a technology-led tool or visual spectacle, but as a political and community-led process of attention, care, protest, and speculative repair. Through The Founders Pillars, she will discuss AR’s role in reclaiming architecture and reframing monuments, bringing erased stories into public view and transforming colonial facades into living sites of memory. Through Confront Extraction, she will speak about reimagining just futures through community-led mobile AR with mining-affected communities in South Africa.Presented in conversation with Interco(a)stal’s work in Bath, Maine, the talk invites audiences to consider how AR can help us read between the ribs of official narratives and return memory, justice, and community-authored visions to public life.
Dr Meghna Singh is a Cape Town-based visual artist and researcher with a PhD in visual anthropology. Through video installation, performance and XR, her work examines colonial and capitalist legacies through decolonial approaches, often blurring documentary and fiction to create immersive environments that question ideas of humanism.
Her public art installations activate urban and rural spaces while foregrounding histories embedded in place. She is a 2025–2026 New Archival Visions Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of the Western Cape, working with Robben Island Museum and Mayibuye Archives to develop an augmented reality experience for Robben Island and leads the Nordic AR and Public Space Network.
