As a terminal punk with a lifelong love of experimental theater, culture jamming, and relative disregard for social convention, how could I not love the new iPhone app Situationist? Or at least the idea behind it anyway – I don’t own an iPhone, and have previously explained why I probably won’t. The concept behind the app is awesome though;  a little like guerilla theater meets social object. In the developers’ own words:  It alerts members to each others’ proximity and gets them to interact in random “situations”. These situations vary from the friendly “Hug me for 5 seconds exactly” or “Compliment me on my haircut”, to the subversive “Help me rouse everyone around us into revolutionary fervour and storm the nearest TV station”. The developers are Benrik, which is a portmanteau of Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag, who are performance artists, world remodelers, and culture jammers themselves. And if you’re wondering if the app is in reference to the international socio-political art revolutionaries of the 50′s and 60′s known as Situationist International (whom we’ve discussed before) the answer is a definitive “yes”. I love the added layer of irony that in order to engage in this anti-capitalist inspired activity, you have to have purchased an iPhone. Benrik’s previous adventures have included things like their “This Diary Will Change Your Life” series, the best of which has been compiled in the book This Book Will Change Your Life. We’ve included a few examples from the 2005 diary below to demonstrate just how much the diary could change your life. Of course, the Situationist app itself could be pretty life-changing, but as we said, it has that little iPhone barrier to ease of consumption. Learn more about Benrik on their site . There’s much more to them than an iPhone app and some cult books.

Sample pages from “This Diary Will Change Your Life” , the best of which is compiled in  This Book Will Change Your Life.