Column VII named Palenque, Mexico and located in Samarkand, Uzbek S.S.R. inside the trajectory of an arc between Gur-Emir and the observatory of Ulugbek [Columna VII, llamada Palenque, México y localizada en Samarkanda, Uzbek R.S.S., dentro de la trayectoria de un arco entre Gur-Emir y el observatorio de Ulugbek]

Leandro Katz’s long career moved between experimental poetry, performance, and conceptual art. In these postcards, which Katz mailed to his friend Jacqueline Barnitz, an art historian at The University of Texas at Austin, he combines one or two artworks into a single piece as a way of complicating their layers of meaning and interpretation. After moving to New York and learning to speak English in 1965, Katz began the project “21 Columns of Language,” a series of typewritten scrolls created on a Royal-brand typewriter, from which a long roll of Japanese rice paper flowed, referencing the mythic continuous paper roll on which Jack Kerouac wrote his novel “On the Road.” “Column VII” is based on a trip that Katz made to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in 1972, where he photographed the fifteenth-century Ulugh Beg Observatory, which is featured in this postcard. On the back of the card he virtually connects the observatory with the tomb of Maya ruler K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, located in Palenque, Mexico.