Ruud Janssen asked Keith Bates English mail artist this question:
Do you think one of these days an outsider of the network might write a book on this mail art?
Keith Bates 6-12-1997 answered:
I can't help but feel that mail art is best experienced from the inside, by participating, so I think it is good that mail artists are the ones to put our practices into a wider context. Without any doubt outsiders will write books about mail art; they write about it now in art magazines and commentaries in catalogues and documentation. It's only a matter of time before the definitive history of mail art is written by an android.
I sent snail mail today to Keith asking to quote his interview and sent him my own new set of questions telling him that I AM the android writing about mail art, only not from the outside.
