The arts can often command attention as a “laboratory” for the different forms of labour deregulation. It is not that artists have been ahead of the transformations of the labour market since the 1980s, but rather that they have, for the most part, escaped the standard of the modern wage system specific to industrial capitalism, now weakened by the hegemony of financial capitalism. The contributions to this volume, stemming from field inquiries in Switzerland, France and Germany, draw on various analytical tools in order to shed light on different artistic disciplines (theatre,music, dance, literature, visual arts), drawing parallels with other fields of employment and labour.