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What is the Crisis of Competence? For quite some time now Western societies have found themselves in a crisis of representation which manifests itself in art, politics and other fields. The rise of abstract art in the 20th century—which virtually severed all ties between the world of objects and their pictorial representation—became the visual symptom of this crisis. The crisis, in turn, was further aggravated by this exit from the picture-world. Art happenings and ambience, or object culture and installations, depart from the picture as their arena of action and, in its stead, have taken reality by storm: the real world itself becomes their stage or showcase of action. Media art, especially, avails itseif of the global information space. Nevertheless this phenomenon has not resolved the crisis of representation: rather, it is indicative of a more deeply situated crisis, namely, the crisis of competence, at the focal point of which is the question of legitimacy.
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The Museum of the Future (2006), by Peter Weibel