Anyma, the Italian EDM superstar who has spent the past five years building one of the genre’s most successful live shows, said Sunday that his art had been turned into “political propaganda” after Istanbul officials canceled his upcoming concert over speculative claims of satanic content.Turkish authorities last week withdrew permission for the show, which had been scheduled for September 12 at the Ataköy Marina Arena as part of Anyma’s ‘ÆDEN’ tour.
The cancellation followed a wave of posts on social media accusing the DJ, whose real name is Matteo Milleri, of incorporating satanic rituals into his stage visuals.The Istanbul Governor’s Office has not issued a formal public statement explaining its decision.
But Emin Gökçegözoğlu, the province’s press and public relations director, confirmed to the Turkish fact-checking group Teyit that the show had been called off because of what he described as its “satanic elements.” Milleri pushed back forcefully against that characterization in a message posted to his Instagram Stories, describing the ‘ÆDEN’ production as a science-fiction narrative that moves through difficult passages before arriving at a resolution, much as any story might.“Like many stories, it weaves through darker chapters before reaching resolution,” Milleri write.
“Taking one scene from any film or work and presenting it out of context as the meaning of the entire project is fundamentally misleading.” Milleri argued that clips circulating online had been pulled from their original context, altered with artificial intelligence, set to unrelated music and spread across the internet to construct a narrative that had nothing to do with the actual production.He was emphatic that none of his own visuals were made with AI, and pointed out what he called the irony that his critics had used the technology themselves to distort his work before condemning it.
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