Urban Habitat Lab: Apothecary for Bike, 2009
MST Ride On! Edition, Calgary, AB
Urban Habitat Lab: Apothecary for Bike is a mobile, human-powered iteration of the Urban Habitat Lab developed for the Ride On! edition of the Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival (MST) festival in Calgary. Built onto a modified bicycle, this version reconfigured the lab as a roaming urban apothecary, foregrounding plants, remedies, and embodied knowledge as tools for ecological connection and care.
As the artist moved through city streets and neighbourhoods, the bicycle-apothecary functioned as both research station and offering site. Drawing from traditions of herbalism, DIY sustainability, and citizen science, the project invited participants to encounter urban flora as active agents rather than background scenery; materials for healing, listening, and shared inquiry.
Rather than prescribing fixed outcomes, Apothecary for Bike emphasized slowness, sensory attention, and informal exchange. The work framed the city as a living pharmacopoeia and positioned ecological knowledge as relational, situational, and collectively produced. This iteration further developed Andres’s ongoing exploration of mobile infrastructures, participatory environmental practices, and forms of care within urban systems.