KOMA - an international comics festival in Brno - presents contemporary Czech and international comics works. The Komixxx project, the Šaufenstr gallery and the Aargh! magazine have pulled together to present different forms of comics and contemporary art as two linked universes. Exhibitions, live painting, art instalation, symposiums, movie screen, workshops, comics market, concerts,theatrical performancies, storytelling, etc. – all that is a vivid organism of the KOMA festival.

The theme this year is UPGRADE - an improvement, an inovation, a term used mostly in the world of software and hardware technology in terms of a replacement of old product for the new one. Nowadays, the term has infiltrated into common vocabulary of younger generations with no following an original association. Today the word can be apply on a generation shift in terms of technological, social and ideological meaning. UPGRADE as a transformation from the original, functional and prevailing to the next evolutional and media level which doesn´t need to be necessarily improved already, but can just pass through a verification process.
UPGRADE as a technological inovation. Media development and its reflection in today´s society. Communication changes from classical analogue media, photography and movie to social media, virtual reality and gaming being projected into society and its behaviour.
UPGRADE as a research of the anthropological improvement and changes. In comics approach, in the field of the sci-fi and hi-tech anthropomorphic and humanoid utopias, such popular in the US hero comics. Generation upgrade – an every new (digital) generation (in ever shorter time frames) means “upgrade“ of the previous generation.
UPGRADE drawn into the home comics tradition and into its maintainance and modifying to the present world. How much the dramaturgical change and affection of long term present phenomenon and characters in the Czech comics is needed? It is not common way in the Czech comics background that classical comics characters are taken over and refreshed by new authors to keep not only their continuity but also adapt them to a new reality.

KOMA 2021: UPGRADE

The 7th International Comics Festival

Date: October 7 to 10, 2021

Venue: Káznice na Cejlu, Bratislavská 68, Brno, the Czech Republic