What does this sentence mean?

"She killed and/or herself."

@1 And/Or was a contemporary art space in Seattle that closed in 1980. There no real traces of it on the internet or I'd provide a link. It was run by Anne Focke, and gave way to 911 Media Arts and COCA. The sentence does read strangely if the reference isn't clear. Anne is definitely still alive and well living in Seattle.

It means she [Anne Focke] personally pulled the plug on the contemporary arts center "and/or" which she had founded.

The reference is in the sentence previous.

Way to STICK IT TO THE MAN, Jen! Damn, that evil billionaire Paul Allen keeps throwin' arts organizations out into the cold! What's weird is that the Allen Family Foundation was 911's biggest single financial contributor for many years, and that devil Vulcan subsidized 911's space in S. Lake Union, paid for major renovations, and financed the organization's way out of debt. Yeah, so screw you man! Leave our arts alone, you selfish gazillionaire!

As someone intimate with the details of Nine One One I would like to add it may have been a financially inappropriate decision for the board to sign a lease for the current space given past financial challenges. It is also important to acknowledge Genni Reilly and Phil Fugi, both of whom helped broker an incredibly fair lease at the time. Without Vulcan the doors may have closed and, now, the time has come to thank them for their in-kind and cash equivalent donations and look to a dynamic new model for the future.

Carole Fuller

According to 911 director Steven Vroom, the lease that 911 held with Vulcan was highly unfavorable for 911: a triple-net lease that kept the nonprofit in charge of maintenance and other costs on the building, in addition to making rent payments. What Carole Fuller, 911 board president, notes above echoes what Vroom said: that 911 made predictions that were more optimistic than realistic when they signed the lease. Vroom also explained that Vulcan was a patient landlord, allowing 911 to owe several months' back rent without hassle.

But over a span of several years, Vulcanland has turned out to be quite hostile territory for small arts nonprofits, while South Lake Union continues to tout itself as a balanced neighborhood full of creative energy. If the arts were a genuine priority for Vulcan, one would think the company might have attempted to address the problem in a comprehensive way before all the independent arts nonprofits were gone.

P.S. Fuller was out of town when I was conducting interviews, so appointed Kurt Kiefer to speak on behalf of the board. I didn't want anyone to wonder why she wasn't quoted in the story.

Just to add - having recently worked and socialized daily at 911 for about 1.5 years - South Lake Union is a depressing failure of a neighborhood revitalization - Vulcan's new buildings are boring, shoddily built, and often ugly - the hundreds of millions poured into development and planning there have yet to yield even a modest street life - the new streetcar has sold more "SLUT" t-shirts than fares because it goes absolutely nowhere useful, like the monorail of old - the much-vaunted 'new urbanist' street-front retail consists of an embarrassing collection of over-specialized boutiques and bad, overpriced food ... to top it off 911's space, built around 5 years ago by a benefactor construction company that proceeded to put the org in long-term debt due to its own cost overruns, is in a totally remote wilderness of a block somewhere between the mammoth new UW medical research center and the faceless pharmaceutical behemoths of Westlake Ave - when large groups of people (very) occasionally converge on the Center, magnetized by the opening of an artist like Gary Hill or Greg Lundgren or the vast hordes of Dorkbot.org do-it-yourselfers (or the well attended party in February 08 to release the "Seattle Women in Film" DVD, organized by yours truly), they are forced to congregate in an awkward garage-like layout of rooms, surrounded by the ominous silent dread of the South Lake Union night, rarely returning to enjoy the low-priced, well-taught, perennially under-subscribed workshops that provide the Center a major -- if meager -- chunk of its income. In sum: the tired trope of big rich developer driving out scrappy beloved arts org from gentrifying neighborhood is totally disingenuous in this case -- in actual fact the story is more one of a weirdly immortal arts organization that has lived on despite being stuck in South Lake Union, which is, was, and always will be a shitty place to be, Vulcan or no, until the city gets its shit together to fix the Mercer Corridor and the Denny traffic situation, thereby allowing any kind of pedestrian traffic or otherwise to navigate through its disheartening streetscape to find any of this so-called vibrant emerging neighborhood BS, and meanwhile 911 is probably vastly better served by hooking up with a like-minded organization like Jack Straw, in a location close to sympathetic media centers like DX Arts and the Henry Art Gallery, and downsizing its criminally under-utilized community space to offer satellite outreach in an increasingly localized, do-it-yourself digital media galaxy, the loss of a wildly original (but poorly attended) art gallery space in Seattle notwithstanding. In other words, fuck Paul Allen - but quit fucking whining and find a better angle, please.