Kristine 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 collaborative. Diekman also investigates the use of physical computing to forward narratives and expand our language of touch. Her work has been shown worldwide in festivals, museums, and art spaces and is in such notable collections as The Getty Center, New York University Fales Library, The Kitchen Center in New York, and The Lux Institute in London. She presents her work at international conferences such as the International Symposium on Electronic Art and others. She has been awarded artistic residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo Art Colony, Harvestworks/Studio Pass, and the Banff New Media Institute to further her work in physical computing, audio design, and video. She has received grants and awards from the Paul Robeson Foundation, Rhode Island Council on the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, California State Arts Council, California Humanities, and Creative Time, amongst others.
Diekman’s current projects include investigating water and climate change and include Run Dry, a digital media project that focuses on the severity of the drought and water contamination in California’s Central Valley. The project is funded by the California Humanities Community Stories Grant and CSUSM Community Engaged Scholarship award. The project is developed collaboratively with residents and organizations in the San Joaquin Valley, and will be distributed via the public library system. Recently she completed, Behold the Tilapia, an animation about severely stressed Salton Sea in Southern California.
In addition to Diekman’s work as an artist, she is also an educator and leader of collaborative vision and social change. As professor of art, media, and design at California State University San Marcos, she works closely with the Southern California community as director of Video in the Community (VIC). Founded by Diekman in 1993, its mission is to produce culturally sensitive media projects in collaboration with community members to help solve problems affecting the region. Working closely with the Latino community, she has produced and directed bi-lingual gang prevention videos for youth and parents and a bi-lingual video addressing reproductive health and intergenerational communication. Additional projects include working in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee with low-income youth to develop their educational and health goals. VIC’s work is funded by county grants, private donations, foundations, and corporate funding, including most notably, the Keck Foundation, the Leichtag Family Foundation, State Farm Youth Advisory Board, and San Diego County Neighborhood Reinvestment Funds. VIC’s work is distributed and utilized throughout the U.S., Europe, and Mexico with more than 8,000 copies in distribution.
Diekman’s academic leadership includes serving as chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, program director of the Arts and Technology Program, program director for Film Studies and faculty liaison to the Office of Community Service Learning. She has served 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. She holds an M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and a B.A. in literature and Chinese studies from Cornell College.
