Arkadiy Kots Band - our lifetime comrades - a combat folk band started by 3 activists in Moscow back in 2010-11. Since late 2022 they have found a temporary shelter during their self-exile in San Cesario di Lecce, at the LoopHouse - the first-ever contemporary music and artistic residency program in Salento.

We are honored to host Arkady Kots’s founders Kirill Medvedev - an acknowledged poet and translator, activist of the RSD (Russian Socialist Movement), and the initiator of the independent publishing house (Free Marxist Press); Oleg Zhuravlev - sociologist, researcher of recent Russian and Ukrainian social movements, and co-founder of the Public Sociology Laboratory (PS Lab); and  Nikolay Oleynikov - artist, member of Chto Delat collective, Rosa School of Engaged Art, FireFlyFrequencies.org and co-curator of FreeHomeUniversity.

As a resident of the Loop-house in this period also is Anna Moiseenko - a documentary film-maker, and independent cinema producer.  Acknowledged author of the Winter Go Away (2012) and Songs of Abdul (2016) now working on her new production.

During their stay, the group will continue with their anti-war initiatives, and support the resistance movement trying to reorganize itself from abroad.

Our collaboration started back in 2020 during the lockdown, when on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the defeat of the nazi-fascism in Europe, we launched the Transeuropean Partizan Jam, a music research around the tradition of partisan songs, as part of the Free Home University labs. A new record is now in gestation, in collaboration with musicians from Salento, including traditional partisans and anti-war songs, and newly composed material
Arkadiy Kots will continue their collaboration with Salento’s virtuosi musicians such as Rocco Nigro, Vito de Lorenzi, Raffaella Aprile among others.

Stay tuned!