Kristine Diekman
Professor
Video and New Media
Art and Technology Track
Visual and Performing Arts Department
California State University, San Marcos
kdiekman@csusm.edu

Video in the Community

Recent Projects

"A Way Out",
gang intervention video

United & Severed
Media Installation

Drawing in the Media Stream:
A Hybrid Media Process
Southwestern College Gallery

Kristine Diekman, a Professor in Arts and Technology, works closely with the Southern California community as Director of Video in the Community, which she founded, to produce videos in collaboration with community members to help solve problems affecting the region. In 2008, she produced and directed a bi-lingual gang prevention video, and in 2009 a gang intervention video for youth.  Both are distributed throughout the U.S., Europe and Mexico.

Ms. Diekman is an internationally known video and new media artist committed to making socially integrated work. Her experimental videos, documentary films and new media installations are interview based, and strive to give voice to the populations and individuals whose life experiences might not otherwise be heard. Her work includes the video, "Corpse and Mirror", based on a monologue by performance artist Tony Allard about his father's institutionalization in a state mental hospital; "United & Severed: That Window of Time", a media installation developed in response to the experiences of women with traumatic injuries; and "Mother on Trial", a new media and video project which addresses infanticide and the institution of motherhood in the United States. Her work has been shown worldwide.

In 2009 she was awarded artistic residencies at the MacDowell Colony and at the Banff New Media Institute to further her work in physical computing. She has received grants and awards from the Paul Robeson Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, California State Arts Council, Creative Time, and the Leichtag Family Foundation, amongst others.

She serves on the Board of Directors of Media Arts Center, San Diego, presenting the San Diego Latino Film Festival, the Teen Producer's Project, and Digital Story Stations throughout California libraries.

Mother on Trial. Her video and new media project addresses infanticide and the institution of motherhood in the United States. The title suggests that when women who kill their children go to trial, in the courtroom and in the national eye, they are first and foremost on trial as mothers, and not murderers. The program investigates the contemporary and historical myths and practices of motherhood, provides an analysis of journalistic practices which touch on these issues, critically evaluates the legal, criminal and medical systems which define and pathologize women's behavior, seeks to understand the socio-economic factors surrounding motherhood and child abuse, and examines the public's desire for retribution when mother's kill.

DOWNSTREAM::MEDIA
performance::video::dance
audio::webcast
project description