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What is the difference between a human and a seagull?

“Seagulls are mostly white and noisy.”

“People are mostly a little brown.”

Both seagulls and humans are vertebrates that live on planet Earth. That's where the similarities end. Questions like this are a sign of anthropocentrism: man has become used to projecting himself onto seagulls (and onto non-human species in general). It doesn't matter at all how similar seagulls and humans are. Human bodies are so different that humans will never be able to perceive the world like seagulls. Man's task, if he wants to save the planet, is instead to learn to respect this otherness. The "gull-ness" of seagulls and the "humanity" of humans need not be compared; they are just some of the many qualities the planet has to offer. For centuries, people have been accustomed to putting man first.

However, the freedom of one species ends where the freedom of another begins. In the time of the Anthropocene, it is clear that man has long exceeded his freedom at the expense of other species. The production Four Days of Proximity (text by Finnish author Pipsy Lonka, 2020) tries to work with humans as just one of many animal species in the spirit of posthumanist philosophy. People often travel to undiscovered exotic locations and sleepy beach resorts to enjoy the uniqueness of seagulls and their environment. It was supposed to be just another beach vacation. The kind that everyone has experienced many times. However, when a person looked into the seagull's eye this time, the beach looked into him.