Willoughby Sharp

Hands Across The Border was a seven city slow scan collaboration. With participation from Paul Wong, Sharon Levett & Daryl Lacey, Video Inn, Vancouver;Randall Lyon & Gus Nelson, Televista Projects, Memphis; Sharon Grace, Video Free America, Berkeley Art Museum, U.C.; Peggy Cady, Bill Bartlett, Chas Leckie. Open Space, Victoria; Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal & Willoughby Sharp, General Idea, Toronto; Liza Bear & Robin Winters, Center for New Art Activities, NY.; et al. Slow-scan television equipment used a computerised memory to sample a picture from a television camera every few seconds, “freeze” it and send it down a telephone line as an audio signal. The machines could only be used between two points at a time. At the receiving end, the signal was decoded and slowly scanned out a still frame on a television monitor.

During the 1980 exhibition of Burden's monumental kinetic sculpture The Big Wheel at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Burden and Feldman were interviewed by art critic Willoughby Sharp. Burden articulates the process of creating The Big Wheel, a 6,000-pound, spinning cast-iron flywheel that is initially powered by a motorcycle, and discusses its relation to his earlier performance pieces and sculptural works. Addressing his motivations and the meaning of this potentially dangerous mechanical art object, Burden discusses such topics as the role of the artist in the industrial world, "personal insanity and mass insanity," and "man's propensity towards violence."

In Nick Zedd's mock docu-drama Police State, he puts his own body on the line to illustrate his belief that “freedom is an illusion.” A black comedy-satire / protest film featuring Rockets Redglare.