Ten Rules for Students and Teachers
E Eye Love, Sister Corita Kent. 1970.
Long attributed to the avant-garde composer, theorist, and artist John Cage, these ten rules were in fact written by the graphic designer, artist, and nun Sister Corita Kent. She conceived of these maxims, with the final rule a direct quote from Cage, and pinned them to the wall of the choreographer Merce Cunningham's Studio where she was teaching a class. Later appropriated as the motto for the art department at Corita Kent's alma mata, Immaculate Heart Convent in Los Angeles, these rules capture a spirit of experimentation befitting to the three artists associated with them, each of them boundary breaking, rigorous, and passionate about their experimentation.
RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.
RULE TWO: General duties of a student: Pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher: Pull everything out of your students.
RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.
RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.
RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
RULE TEN: We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.
HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything. It might come in handy later.