RESET, a 2020 moving-image work co-produced and co-commissioned by Forma and Frieze on the occasion of Alberta becoming the recipient of the annual Frieze Artist Award, anchors '…Moving Beyond the Time of Salt', the artist’s first solo exhibition in Köln, Germany at Temporary Gallery. In the thirty-two-minute collaborative call-to-action, RESET’s first three minutes open with the artist beckoning the viewer to join her in meditation in an attempt to heal, to ground into one’s body, to become embodied, and, with the body establish a path to healing. Transitioning to a dream-like sequence, the artist narrates fragments of a poetic text, On Touching, by Ama Josephine Budge. The original score, Maroon Rage by St. Mozelle, aka YBG, accompanies the viewer throughout, punctuated by the artist’s voice reading words that also float up the screen. A recognition of the ancestors by recalling a great-grandmother’s tidal singing and the exhalation of marbles from a mouth, the screen breaks open into fractured frames of watery sites, wake worlds, murmurations of migrating birds, and protesters in widespread cities interrupted by vertical rectangle-shaped stripes of visual discord, further breaking up the screen into a montage of dislocated frames of reference.

Created during the COVID pandemic and influenced by the lack of outdoor space and Alberta’s deep longing to be in the natural world during lockdown, the artist meditated on what walking, freedom, and caring for the environment mean. Her place of retreat during that time – the curtilage of the Barbadian family home– included a wild garden with calabash trees and bird song. Alberta's reflection on a sense of longing in RESET suggests that the landscape, more than a setting, becomes a different player in the piece to speak about history's complexities.

The film’s arc starts with the artist’s tender and calming voice transitioning to the sound of a ringing bell, followed by an ululation building to a crescendo shaped by Alberta and her accomplices (collaborators)—including a writer, dancer, performer, and composer—whose wide-ranging participation plays out in spaces deeply rooted in colonialism. The use of sound throughout Alberta’s practice is a deliberate borrowing from the hybrid structure of Creole languages deployed across the Caribbean region. Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite’s conception of Nation Language can be highlighted here to understand how the qualities of the mash-up, and syncopations draw together seemingly disparate and multi-layered sounds that borrow heavily from Dancehall culture, South African Amapiano, and orchestras all paying reverence to the sounds of that natural world and the lineages across generations. Songlines drum up an ancient rumble in our belly as we witness this work bring forth new movement and memories.

The black female body–often associated with the demands of their labour while being little cared for–moves throughout the film in new ways to reset communal networks of care, while not neglecting ourselves.  Women’s work here involves composting—integrating, assimilating, and action—as seedbeds are prepared for creative and agentive action. Humus, death, and decay are woven into the tapestries of primordial life and the sacred feminine is liberated by the aqueous and fugitive undercurrents writhing in the snake's presence. As the work becomes more urgent, public actions and demonstrations across the world including those in Glasgow, South Africa, and the Black Lives Matter protest in Barbados, populate the screen, shaking the viewer away from complacency and comfort.

A male limbo performer, bopping and weaving under the front bumper and grilles of a parked car on a Havana side street, further disrupts the screen, heightening the sense of precarity. Breath becomes a uniting and unequal force while considering multiple interconnected histories. Made during a time of loss of so many people including Simone Francis in the UK, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor in the US–those who did not have the luxury of drawing air into their lungs, the film invites us to take a pause, sit with shared collective grief, give thought to what it means to be human and hold each other and ourselves with greater care while advocating for justice and liberation strategies.