The k-bulletin nr.3 is entitled<kollektive/arbeit>. The contributions by authors from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and U.S.A. are dealing with the question how neo-liberalism is affecting the condition and conception of culture and politics.

The idea of the <kollektive/arbeit> edition has been strongly influenced by meetings and discussions with different cultural producers, activists and artists collectives all over Europe. It was significant for the last ten years that the democratization of cultural production was high on the agenda. To question the role of the institutional framework as well as working in various creative fields as collectives or single persons in changing correlation's (music, graphics, art, fashion and politics) brought up a new notion of a common instead of an exclusive culture. To work in self-organized formations like running illegal bars, clubs and art spaces, as well as to collaborate in issue oriented projects with people from various backgrounds, seemed to be a way out of the fixed boundaries and power relations in the traditional cultural field.

Nowadays a shift of paradigm can already be noted: The traditional concept and labor division between graphic designers, theoreticians, musicians, critics, artists, political activists and curators got new strength. In the theoretical descriptions of this new phenomenon the social-economical background for this general or personal paradigm shift is mostly not questioned. Usually the argumentation follows the bourgeois concept of failing utopias. In the center of this pessimistic image stands the assertion that collective and other forms of collaborative structures in the 90ties wouldn't have brought what they promised (i.e. non-hierarchical work structures). Other actual statements say that the non-hierarchical formations would have been already implemented into late capitalist production forces. Beside this assumptions, a debate whether the flexible and precarious salary biographies of cultural producers are <the> role model of neo-liberal economies got to be an important issue for self-reflection, mostly in the German speaking area. In the contrary to this we can find nowadays new movements in the South, West and East European regions where collective activities as well as so called informal economies are received as subversive to the hegemonic concept of the new political-economical structures.

Before this background the aim of <kollektive/arbeit> is to bring together different voices and projects, which are or were dealing with the effects of the so called new economies on cultural and political practices, as well as on the changes in our notion of <work> (paid/non-paid). Furthermore k-bulletin nr.3 wants to put a highlight on the idea of the <collective> in its historical, actual, cultural or political meaning.