Nabil had thought a lot about what he was going to put into this presentation. He thought of using a poster he’d created which was of a medical syringe dripping some lethal fluid on top of the standard disabled wheelchair sign … which was slowly dissolving.
Alternatively, there was the front cover of his book, ‘First to Go’ or the poem ‘Hitler is not Dead’ both written in 1996. Or, as a consequence of creating the play ‘DARE: Disabled, Anarchist, revolutionary, enclave’ when he hadn’t realised that the American movement’s slogan ‘Not Dead Yet’ was also created in 1996.
For Nabil 1996 was a culmination of a development that began in 1981, with the International Year of Disabled People. He started to become aware of disabled people’s place in history – which is not taught. Vic Finkelstein made him aware that disabled people had been gassed by the Nazi’s in Germany which was all part of a euthanasia campaign, a campaign to get rid of disabled people from society because they were regarded as useless eaters.
There follows a debate between the artists involved in the project manifesting as a group response.
