Paper & Carriage

Due out this week, printed in an edition of 250 with silkscreened covers by Shawn Stuckey, this issue features Colin Beattie, Britton Bertrand, Erin Ergenbright, Dora Ishida, Alex Jovanovich and Moshe Zvi Marvit, with artist centerfold provided by Deb Sokolow and features the continuation of Lilli Carré's "HUMS."

The release party will be held at The Green Lantern Gallery on May 2nd, with live readings and music to follow provided by The Singleman Affair. The Green Lantern Gallery is located at 1511 N Milwaukee Ave., on the second floor. This event is FREE and will begin at 8pm.

 ***excerpt from Issue No. 02***

Ukranian Gaslight Circle
Dora Ishida

What follows is my account of all that I know about an organization whose name has never before seen print – a clandestine group:  The Ukrainian Gaslight Circle. 
    The account is chronological.  Evidence of various kinds – dialogue, photographs, etc, are interspersed.  When a piece of evidence or telling fact occurs, I insert a number in brackets. 
    I knew nothing about any of this two months ago–and I still know very little.  You’ll have to forgive lapses in my account – I am not a journalist or a writer. 
    10/2/2007: I met a friend of mine for drinks.  His name is Frances.  He’s a carpenter and a sculptor, but works mostly for other artists, helping to create pieces for exhibitions.  We met that day at a bar near the studio where he was
working at the time, and he related to me a very peculiar story. 
    It seems that in late September he was contacted by a man he had previously worked for, the sculptor Jack Post.  Post asked Frances if he was looking for work.  Frances said he was, so Post told him to come by an address in Ukrainian Village  [1] the following afternoon.  When Frances arrived there, to what he described as a “blank storefront on a residential block,” he pressed a buzzer entitled U.G.C.  After about five minutes a teenager came to the door and let him in.  Frances asked where Post was.  The kid said he was downstairs and they entered the building.  The whole first floor was empty.  They crossed it and came to another door, which led to a stairwell.  Down they went to where the stairs opened into another apartment, this one fully furnished [2].  At this point, Frances was told not to touch anthing at all.  The kid said this in a very serious way, but wouldn’t explain further.  At the other end of the apartment they found another largely empty room full of tools and raw
materials, a sort of workshop.  Seven or eight people were sitting at a table [3].  Jack Post was one of them.  He waved Frances over and explained to him that they (he and Jack) were going to be making a manikin [4].  Jack had some photographs of what he wanted the manikin to look like.  Now this is the weird part – the photographs were not photographs of a different manikin – they were photographs of a person, an old man.  “We don’t want it to look exactly like this,” said Jack.  “Just kind of like it” [5].
    Frances was not introduced to the other people at the  table, but he recognized two of them from the art world– one was the playwright Alice Maas, and another, the writer, Jesse Ball. 
    He spent the next twelve hours there working on the manikin.  The kid went and brought them food.  For his work he was paid very well – a better rate than usual. Before he left, Jack told him that the whole thing was secret – he
shouldn’t   tell   anyone   about  it,  not   at   all. 
    At this point, then, we have:  1, a building in
Ukrainian Village; 2, an empty floor, a furnished apartment where nothing can be touched; 3, a roundtable of people who don’t introduce themselves; 4, a manikin that, 5, ought to resemble but not look exactly like a particular old man. 
    That was in late September.  The day before I met Frances for a drink, he had been contacted again.  He had said
nothing about the manikin to anyone, not even to his
girlfriend, who had wondered where he was so late the night
before.  Maybe this good behavior got back to the U.G.C.   In any case, they required his services again:  he got a call from Jack Post. 
    “Frances, I want you to do something for me.  It’s not
much, but it’ll pay pretty well.  Are you interested?” 
Frances said he was.  So, he met Jack, this time at a diner.  Jack gave him
an envelope and a bunch of twenties in a rubber band.  He said that wasn’t Frances’s pay – it was to be used to get a homeless person to sleep in a particular doorway that same night   with  this  envelope  underneath  the   blankets,   cardboard, sleeping bag, whatever.  At this point, Frances said he wouldn’t do it.  The whole thing was too weird.  He wanted to know more if he was going to be a part of it.  Jack said he couldn’t tell him
more:  it wasn’t his thing to talkabout.  Frances said he’d better
talk/explain if he wanted him to do this thing.  So,
Jack explained a little, but swore Frances to secrecy.
    Apparently U.G.C. stands for Ukrainian Gaslight Circle.
It had been formed only a month before – because of something
that had happened, a slight of some kind.  One of the
members, Jack wouldn’t say who, had been offended by
someone designated as “P.”  The Gaslight Circle had been formed to drive P. crazy through a series of seemingly random circumstances [6].  Since this was pretty diabolical stuff – it had to be kept secret, but a lot of the work required
construction of one sort or another, so Jack Post ended up in it. 

That’s when he dropped one really screwed up fact:  the reason Frances couldn’t touch anything in the apartment is because it was a model of P.’s apartment [7].  Whenever P. moves anything in his apartment, they move it in the model apartment.  That way they can keep track of what P. is seeing and therefore thinking. 
    Frances agreed to take the envelope.  As he told me the story, he became a bit cagey – he wouldn’t say for instance, where he had asked the homeless guy to sleep.  Neither would
he say where the U.G.C. was. 
    “It’s got to be fake,” I told him. “It has to be some kind
of trick.”
    “You didn’t see the way they were there in the
basement.  Those  people   were  all  in   the  middle   of    something.”
    We  sat  there  for  a  minute  quietly. 
    “Don’t you think you should do something
about  it?”   I  asked   him.
    “Like   what?”
    “Like, tell the police.  It’s a crime of some sort,
I should think.” 
    “Dora, you can’t tell anyone about this.  I’ll get in trouble.  Jack was a little crazy when he told me not to tell anyone, and if he finds out.  Dora.  Dora – promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
    Well, I’m not to be trusted on that account.  That was on the second of October.  I left Frances, telling him I wouldn’t say
anything.  He had been freaked out about the pseudo apartment, the manikin, the homeless person, but what bothered me the most was that he seemed to be actually afraid that they would find out he’d told about them.  Of course, I decided to look into it further. 
    So, I approached Alice Maas at a theatre event.  It wasn’t her
play, but she happened to be there:  pure good fortune on my part. 
I got her to talk to me at the side of the room and asked about
the Gaslight Circle.  Her face went white for a second, but
then   she   got    control. 
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Who told you this garbage?” 
    “No one,” I said. 
    “I have a right to know, if someone’s making things up about me.” 
    I said she didn’t, actually.  She asked me who I was.  I
wouldn’t say.  I left, and went home to gather my thoughts. 
She was clearly involved, and that made Frances’s story
true.  I knew already that it was true – but her denial of
it made it seem darker.  It must be correct that the
Gaslight  Circle  really  is  trying  to   drive   P.   mad. 
    So, I tried to find Jack Post, but couldn’t.  A woman at
the building where his studio is, on Goat Island,
said  he was  away  for  two  weeks. 
    Next, I tried to find Jesse Ball.  I got the address online, and went to his house.  No one was there.  I waited outside
and watched him go in.  Then, I knocked at the door. 
    “Weren’t you just waiting outside?”
    “Yes,” I said.  “Can I come in?”
    “No.  Who are you?” 
    I explained that I was doing a story for a newspaper about the Ukrainian Gaslight Circle and I wanted to know his involvement.  He didn’t say anything, just looked at me. 
    A  woman  came  to  the  door   then. 
    “I don’t know   about   this   Ukrainian  Gas Company,” he said.   “Where   did  you  hear   about  it?”
    “Here and there,” I said.  “But I heard you were involved.” 
    “What   is   it?”    he   asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said.  “I don’t know yet.”
    “Why would  you   write  an  article   about  something  you know  nothing   about?” he said. 
    The woman at his side said something to him that I couldn’t hear, or maybe it wasn’t in English.  In any case, he turned back
 to  me:
    “I  can’t  help  you.   Goodbye,”  and   shut   the  door. 
    I knocked again. 
    This  time  the  woman  answered  the  door. 
    “Can   I   speak   to  Jesse   Ball   again?”  I   asked. 
    “Go away,” she said, and closed the door. 
    I took a photograph of Alice Maas, a photograph of
Jesse Ball, photographs of blank storefronts in Ukrainian Village on blocks with houses.  I tried to find Jack Post.  A week passed.  Finally, I got a frantic phone call from Frances.
    “Dora, what the fuck did you say?  What are you doing to me?”
    “Not to you,” I said.  “I just want to help out this poor guy, P.  I want to do an article, and tell him, so he knows.  If he reads the article, he’ll find out.”
    Frances was furious.  He’d gotten a call from Jack telling
him he wasn’t ever going to get work from Jack again, or from
any other big Chicago artists.  And he’d better keep
quiet   or   it  would  get    worse. 
    “If you won’t think about me, at least think about
yourself – don’t publish an article about this.  Not one they’ll see.”
    “A little Asian girl like me,” I said, “they won’t do anything.  It would be wrong.” 
    He shook his head.  
    I’ve tried to call him since and he won’t answer. 

Well, I don’t know what else there is to say.  I couldn’t find anything more out, even with another couple months of looking around and poking here and there.  I put an add on Craigslist, and it was mysteriously deleted after only an hour.  I put up signs in Ukrainian Village.  I followed Jack Post. 
    I wanted to have more if I was going to write the article (the woman I talked to at the Chicago Tribune said this wasn’t even an article, it was libel, to which I said, good journalism is always on the edge of libel; and the Sun-Times didn’t reply), but all I have are the previous conclusions, the photographs, and a feeling that something bad is going on.  Frances said one thing I wonder about.  He said:  what if P. deserves it?  I don’t know.  If you read this, and you are P., then what’s happening to you is manufactured.  It isn’t natural.  Maybe you walked past a window where there was a manikin that looked like your father.  Maybe someone is sending you photographs of your apartment with people in it who’ve never been there.  I can’t guess what’s going on, but I know this:  you’re not going mad. 
    Well, I guess the chance of P. reading this isn’t great. But I’m curious: I want to know more.  If anyone else finds anything about the U.G.C., or hears anything, contact Paper and Carriage and they’ll send you on to me. 

-- January 3, 2008