A living-room chair, tangled cables, motors and the memory of a childhood home: at the Conservatoire Charles Munch, annexe Piver, artist Félix Côte presents Le roi se meurt, a free kinetic installation for Nuit Blanche, during the night of Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, June 7, 2026. On view Saturday from 7pm to 2am, this piece turns an ordinary object into a suspended sculpture, set in motion by a mechanism that replays a final sequence of everyday gestures. The title echoes Eugène Ionesco’s play, in which a monarch learns of his impending death; here it is the living-room chair that becomes the quiet witness fated to fade away.
An installation that weaves in Nuit Blanche's programming, the free night when Paris opens its cultural venues, public spaces, and certain less-expected addresses to contemporary art for one evening. There you encounter installations, performances, screenings, or works presented in formats that vary quite a lot from one neighborhood to another. At the Conservatoire Charles Munch, the approach takes a more intimate turn: rather than chasing grandeur, Félix Côte animates a fragment of familiar furniture and gives it a domestic memory, almost silent.
In a partial reconstruction of a living room, Le roi se meurt stages a dialogue between technology and memory. The work of Félix Côte interrogates the engines of obsolescence baked into today’s digital industries, repurposing doors, chairs, printers, and everyday furniture in its installations and videos. With this chair that keeps moving, sustained by a network of cables and motors, the object seems to cling to existence a moment longer. A fragile presence, one watches it the way you’d listen for a final sound emanating from a familiar room.
Kinetic installation
The King is Dying is a kinetic installation that summons the memory of the artist’s childhood home. A tribute to Eugène Ionesco’s play The King Dies, in which a monarch learns of his imminent death one morning, the installation foresees the disappearance of a discreet witness to the household: the living-room chair. It reinterprets its daily gestures one last time and faces its approaching end. In a partial reconstruction of the living room, this everyday object is transformed into a suspended sculpture powered by a system of cables and motors. Memory becomes a machine and is strained by technology. The looping sequence lets the chair speak one final time.
Félix Côte’s work seeks to resist the obsolescence mechanisms of today’s digital industries. In his installations and videos, he tests the boundaries between technology and intimacy by repurposing elements of domestic furniture. Doors, chairs and old printers are set under the pressure of computational logic.1
1Computational thinking focuses on solving problems, designing systems, and even understanding human behavior.
With the support of Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, and L’Héxagone, Scène Nationale Arts et Science.
With the support of the Conservatoire Municipal Charles Münch
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Dates and Opening Time
From June 6, 2026 to June 7, 2026
Location
Charles Munch Conservatory
7 Passage Piver
75011 Paris 11
Access
Metro lines 2 and 11 at Belleville station
Prices
Free
Official website
www.paris.fr
