Phalanstery

In 1971, in a traditional area of Amsterdam, a cosmopolitan group of artists, writers and craftsman created a community that they then called ‘El Falansterio del Tulipán’. The purpose of this community was purely intellectual: the totality of members met once a year, while other members lived in situ within the house were the community was originally created and established. In fact, the house was at the centre of the community’s activities and this experience was indeed connected with all the ‘collective’ experiments that were trendy at that time.

As is well-know, the notion of phalanstère 'was a type of building designed for a utopian community and developed in the early 1800s by Charles Fourier [1772-1837]. Based on the idea of a phalanx, this self-contained community consisted of 1,600 people working together for mutual benefit’ (quote from Le Petit Robert, 2002). Ingaramo and the other members adapted this aspect of Fourier’s proposal as well as many other elements of the life within the ‘falansterio’ as described in Fourier’s writings. The idea of ‘tulipán’ was due to the local connotation of it, that is, the sense of rebelion and the sense of utopia realized. As it is known in Holland, the idea of a ‘tulipe noir’ refers to the legend of Cornélius van Baerle, a relative of Corneille de Witt (1623-1672), who was trying to produce what then was considered as impossible, as a physical impossibility.

The ‘Falansterio del Tulipán’ was one of the first collective experiences which, outside a Castilian-speaker environment, was using Castilian as their vehicular language, although the origin of their members was very varied and cosmopolitan. There were several incidents and events within the community during its existence. The community lasted until 1979 where it tragically ended, as was the case for similar collective experiences then in Europe and elsewhere.

Our interest in this collective experience is not only due to the works of E. Ingaramo, E. Benaján and R. Fogaretta, who were part of it, but also because such experiment is a unique case due to its avant-garde nature in terms of language approach and intellectual perspective to speculative issues, as well as for art and art-related matters.