Abstract This presentation centers on the projection of the 55-minute documentary Monarca de Norte a Sur: An Audiovisual Memory of Exile, an artistic research project that reveals the fragile yet resilient conceptual worlds of Nicaraguan musicians in diaspora. Drawing on a collective of twelve composers based in San José, Costa Rica, the film captures how these artists reconstruct musical landscapes that an authoritarian regime sought to erase — sonic worlds that embody precarious knowledge, expression, and cultural continuity. In doing so, the documentary acts as an artistic intervention into the politics of memory and epistemic survival, documenting endangered conceptual worlds shaped by repression, displacement, and resistance.

The narratives in Monarca de Norte a Sur reflect the concrete experiences of exile resulting from the authoritarian violence unleashed by the Ortega–Murillo regime since 2018, and intensifying against cultural producers post-2022. Produced by COPAL (Colectivo de Artistas y Productores Latinoamericanos), this documentary is itself a form of artistic research: it documents, preserves, and disseminates knowledge that otherwise risks disappearance, and it activates collective memory as a site of critical inquiry and creative response. The project aligns with SAR’s emphasis on artistic research that engages with precarious forms of knowledge — practices that are socially and politically entangled and that generate alternative ways of seeing, hearing, and knowing the world.

As executive producer and historian of memory and authoritarianism, I propose screening the film with English subtitles to open dialogue between artistic practice and research at SAR. The presentation reflects on music as artistic research that preserves endangered conceptual worlds and minoritised knowledges, foregrounding memory-based justice and collective imagination in contexts of repression, exile, and global authoritarian resurgence.