"On a peaceful summer evening in 2002 in the small village of Brösarp in Scania, twelve two- and three-cylinder tractors from the 1950s and 60s were positioned in a semi-circle at a fruit plantation and the sounds of bells ringing can be heard. Before an enthusiastic audience of 1000, the old tractors started their engines and pressed the gas pedals while idling. They raced, purred, played, and sang in the sunset. The landscape in Brösarp is a cultural landscape. With plow, horse, and tractor, it has been created by people. The efforts of generations can be read therein. A cultural landscape is a narrative of the work of people, of their villages and material conditions. Forty and fifty years old, the tractors in Johansson's work are already stories in themselves, and the audience gazes on this evening over a landscape that will soon be a sparsely populated area where not a tractor plows and not a cow grazes. One could thus experience the tractor concert as requiem and lament for a region on its way to disappearing. The tractors sing of a time that has escaped. But if there is no memory, then there is no future. As such, the Konzert für 12 Traktoren is also a work as laudation of work. By the way: if you project a Nuffield 342 faster than light, your vision goes black."

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Tractor drivers:

Erland Josefsson
Klas Berndtsson
Lars-Erik Olsson
Simon Neumer
Magnus Hildesson
Ulf Olsson
Anderz Erlandson
Peo Larsson
Morgan Olsson
Christer Olsson
Jenny Olsson
Bo Isaksson

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12 "Zetor" tractors
directed by Sven-Åke Johansson

Recorded by Mikael Forsman, Orust, Sweden, 2009.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC