Forever & Today, Inc. presents This is My Life (Shirley Bassey), 2009, a newly commissioned multi-channel video installation by American artist Conrad Ventur.

Ventur brings together concepts of biography, celebrity, and captured historical performances within the realm of expanded cinema in This is My Life (Shirley Bassey), using selections from a lifetime of performances by legendary Welsh singer Dame Shirley Bassey?s unforgettable 1968 song “This is My Life.”

Culled from the internet site YouTube, videos of Bassey singing “This is My Life” during various stages of her career are simultaneously filtered through slowly spinning crystal prisms suspended in close proximity to the lenses of projectors, creating a kaleidoscopic effect casting infinite images of the songstress. An ethereal and haunting experience ensues, as the singer appears at different ages and stages of her career with a chorus of Basseys singing along in rhythm and time.

“This is My Life,” an autobiographical song, became one of Bassey?s signature hits among a discography that boasts “Diamonds Are Forever,” “Goldfinger,” and “Moonraker” from the James Bond 007 films that made her beloved by audiences worldwide. Ventur?s work highlights Bassey?s larger-than-life persona coupled with her natural elegance, sex appeal, and playful wit as an entertainer at ease with the audience in a dazzling array of theatrical gowns. The song gains even more resonance since Bassey herself experienced rags-to-riches success when she was discovered as a teenager, then a single mother working in an economically depressed Welsh town.

Similar to Ventur?s recent works featuring female celebrities from Marlene Dietrich to Dolly Parton, This is My Life (Shirley Bassey) captures the innate ability of a performer to make private moments within public forums. Using technology to create complex environments that meld past and present with art and life, Ventur reiterates the continuing impact of these icons. From their initial live performances, to their redistribution to untold audiences online, Ventur explores how these talents trace a trajectory both in song and life of overcoming adversity to realize transformative potential.